Well, we didn’t get the House Homeland Security Subcommittee hearing we were hoping for today, but the Chairman of the full committee, Rep. Michael McCaul, made news answering questions at a press breakfast this morning.
From The Hill (hat tip: The Flying Camel):
The head of the House Homeland Security Committee says an Obama administration plan to resettle Syrian refugees in the U.S. is a “serious mistake” and should be stopped until safeguards are in place.
“We have no way… to know who these people are and so I think bringing them in is a serious mistake,” Chairman Michael McCaul (R-Texas) said during a Christian Science Monitor breakfast on Thursday.
McCaul said the U.S. has “no intelligence footprint or capability” inside Syria to ensure refugees mean no harm.
“We don’t have databases on these individuals so we can’t properly vet them,” he added, “to know where they came from, to know what threat they pose, because we don’t have the data to cross-reference them with.”
McCaul, who has visited Syrian refugee camps overseas, said that while there are “a lot of mothers and kids, there are [also] a lot of males of the age that could conduct terrorist operations.”
“That concerns me,” he added.
The U.S. could resettle around 2,000 Syrian refugees this fiscal year and potentially thousands more in fiscal 2016 under the State Department-led effort. The Department of Homeland Security has authority to approve the admissions.
McCaul first raised concerns about the effort in January during a panel hearing, saying the administration is creating a “federally funded jihadi pipeline” into the U.S.
U.S. intelligence officials have expressed reservations about the program and lawmakers, including Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), whose district could absorb some of the refugees, are pressing to have the effort halted.
McCaul said the program has created a “split” in the administration between the State Department and others agencies like the FBI, which is “saying this is a really bad idea from a security standpoint.”
Apparently McCaul went on to say that he couldn’t imagine any community would want to welcome this right now.
However….
…..does the Congressman know that, as the number one resettlement state in the country, Texas has received 100 of them as of May first, trailing only California by three (CA received 103).
And, just remember readers! one of the leading US refugee resettlement contractor CEO’s (Brit David Miliband, brother to ‘Red Ed’) is demanding that Obama admit 65,000 Syrians by the end of his term in office.
Be sure to let your member of Congress know how you feel about Syrian refugees coming to your town!