Michael Chertoff: OSU Terror Attack No Reason to Keep Out 'Refugees'

Former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said the U.S. government does not need to change the number of refugees it allows into the country after the Ohio State University attack because people who are not refugees have committed similar crimes.

Abdul Razak Ali Artan, 20, was a refugee from Somalia who drove into a crowd of pedestrians and stabbed people with a butcher knife at Ohio State on Monday. ISIS claimed Artan was one of their lone wolves.

Some lawmakers have previously suggested limiting the number of refugees the U.S. accepts from countries with a high level of terrorist activity. President-elect Donald Trump tweeted today, "ISIS is taking credit for the terrible stabbing attack at Ohio State University by a Somali refugee who should not have been in our country."

Chertoff, who served in the George W. Bush administration, was asked if reducing the number of refugees coming into the U.S. from certain countries would be an appropriate response to the Ohio terrorist attack.

"No. I don't think it's -- first of all, we don't know about this person's background. The fact that someone was a refugee doesn't make them necessarily a problem or not a problem. It's like we have people like Dylann Roof, who is not a refugee and he killed people in a church," he said, referring to the white supremacist who killed nine at a Charleston church last year, following a Council on Foreign Relations discussion on "Domestic Security in the Age of ISIS."

"So I think you've got to be a little bit more precise in knowing if there's something about this person's background, why did they do it? What's it about? Otherwise, you are going to wind up excluding everybody, including people born in the country, because you are always going to find somebody who committed an act of violence that comes from a particular background," he added.