Where Do Terror Babies Come From?

Much as she may try to deny it, Rep. Debbie Riddle, R-Tomball, has made political hay out of the concept of terrorist anchor babies. So we just had to ask her: Where do little terror babies come from?

At last Wednesday's Texas Tribune breakfast, Riddle tried to blame all the mocking press she had received on being tricked by Anderson Cooper, and then put all the ills of the world on the "liberal progressive godless way." She said that she'd never meant to talk about terrorist anchor babies, but then went on to let this little gem fly:

"What I should have said is I think there's a possibility for that, and let me tell you, I did visit with an expert, just to make sure I wasn't totally nuts, I guess, Dr. [Jeffrey] Addicott with St. Mary's University. He is an expert, he's the only one I think, the only law professor in the nation that has a facility, that they teach what is it called terror law.¹ That's what he teaches, and I visited with him at length on several occasions, and I asked him, 'Do you think that I'm just nuts, or is this a possibility?' and even Dr. Addicott said that is something he thinks this is serious and we need to look into."

Wait, what? We just had to follow up on that one with her. If you go to the audio on the Tribune website, the relevant section starts at the 51.37 minute mark, but here's the transcript:

Austin Chronicle: Good morning, representative. Just a very quick question. Terrorist anchor babies: Nature or nurture?

Debbie Riddle: Wait, I don't understand the question, give him the mic back.

AC: You said in your longer version of your answer that you thought there was a possibility that people could come over and have babies and they could later become terrorists. Do you think they're just born that way or trained by their parents? What's the process there?

DR: Oh, I think you know the answer to that. God created people. God created these babies. God created our children, and I think that children are to be nurtured and be brought up in the nurturing admonition of the Lord -- is what the word says. And so, that, there's, there are those in the world that I think chose to emphasize more conflict and issues of that sort with their children. But the terror baby thing was not my term. "Vacation baby" was.

Unfortunately for Riddle, Anderson Cooper has called her out on that. In his Sept. 17 daily podcast, he repeated the footage of his August interview with Riddle:

Anderson Cooper: Representative Riddle, you told my producer that pregnant women are coming here as tourists, having babies and then going home, quote, 'with the nefarious purpose of turning them into little terrorists, who'll then come back to the U.S. and do us harm.' You said it was part of an organized terrorist element and could cost us lives."

DR: That is information that is coming to my office from former FBI officials.

So how does that gel with Riddle's claim to the Tribune breakfast attendees that "I'd never heard" of terror babies before Cooper mentioned it?

As Cooper pointed out, the FBI has said that there is no intelligence at all to back these ridiculous claims "and that terrorists have little trouble recruiting grown Americans. They don't need to make baby Manchurian Candidates." According to Cooper, even Addicott, the law professor that Riddle claimed backed her theory, said that while it was not a theoretical impossibility "given the timeline of 20 or so years to raise a terrorist from birth, he told us it's at the bottom of his list of terror concerns."

Footnote 1: In fact, multiple law schools have dedicated counter-terrorism and national security faculty and centers, including Syracuse, Georgetown, and the National Security Clinic at UT Austin School of Law. (Read our interview with former clinic director Kristine Huskey here.)