We’ve Already Let Terrorists In As Refugees

Hours after the Paris attacks, I called on the President to pause the intake of Syrian refugees until we can be 100% guaranteed that no ISIS terrorist can take advantage of Americans’ goodwill and sneak into the country. The need for pause was obvious given the facts.

In September, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper warned the U.S. intelligence community has a “huge concern” that ISIS may seek to infiltrate Syrian refugees. In October, FBI Director James Comey cautioned the U.S. government may not be able to thoroughly vet all Syrian refugees coming into the United States due to gaps in our knowledge of ISIS terrorists in Syria. These doubts in our security systems by those who oversee them — is clear cut. We can’t afford to take unnecessary risks with American lives.

Alternatively, hours after French authorities announced that ISIS terrorists used the Syrian refugee crisis to sneak into France, Congresswoman Tammy Duckworth called for the United States to admit 200,000 Syrian refugees. In light of the intelligence, she called for twenty times more refugees than the Obama administration. In advocation of her plan, Congresswoman Duckworth wrote on these pages that halting the Syrian refugee program meant the terrorists won. I think we should look at the facts.

Look no further than the case of two terrorists from Iraq linked to al Qaeda-Iraq, now called ISIS, who were among several dozen suspected terrorists admitted to the U.S. as Iraqi refugees.

The FBI arrested Waad Ramadan Alwan and Mohanad Shareef Hammadi in Kentucky in 2011 after they were caught attempting to ship heavy weapons, including a Russian-made machine gun and a Stinger missile launcher, to ISIS. The FBI connected Alwan’s fingerprints to an improvised explosive device (IED) responsible for killing American soldiers, a crime Alwan admitted to in 2006 when arrested in Kirkuk.

In response to the arrests, the former head of the military’s Joint IED Defeat Organization, retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Barbero, wondered how these terrorists managed to slip through the cracks. “How did a person who we detained in Iraq — linked to an IED attack, we had his fingerprints in our government system — how did he walk into America in 2009?”

After the FBI sting in Kentucky, President Barack Obama wisely suspended the Iraqi refugee program for six months — a fact the Administration did not disclose to Congress, according to ABC News.

Since the start of the Syrian civil war, the U.S. has admitted more than 1,800 Syrian refugees, and the Administration has announced plans to accept an additional 10,000 Syrian refugees by the end of 2016. Rep. Tammy Duckworth called for increasing that number to 200,000. She calls it “not letting the terrorists win.” I call it reckless and extreme.

Ignoring gaps in our ability to stop terrorists from entering our country — the very gaps that ISIS will be sure to exploit — is no way to keep the American people safe.