Month: February 2009

FBI director Mueller: “…a perversion of the immigrant story”

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This is why I love the Washington Times and hope it will survive as papers big and small crash and burn!   Judy told you in the previous post that the New York Times is reporting (3 months after the fact) that Somali “youths” are leaving the US and assumed to be traveling to Somalia to join the Jihad.  The Washington Times had reported the story on the front page on December 29, 2008 here.

The Washington Times is reporting that news again, and adding so much more to the story today.   This excellent reporting by Ben Conery  takes the speech yesterday that FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III gave to the Council on Foreign Relations and gets out and finds more information.

A monthly conference call with Homeland Security:

Ahmed Elmi, chairman of the Somali-American Community Association in the Washington area, said Somali community leaders throughout the U.S. are concerned about what happened in Minnesota and are eager to help the FBI and other law-enforcement agencies deal with the issue.

“We tell Somalis: ‘If you know something, you should report it immediately. It’s a crime if you don’t. If you don’t know the language or feel uncomfortable, go to Somali community agencies for help,’ ” Mr. Elmi said.

On the first Tuesday of each month, a half-dozen Somali community leaders from throughout the U.S., including from Minnesota, have a one-hour teleconference with the Department of Homeland Security, Mr. Elmi said.

“We’ve spoken with FBI agents in Virginia, and we are hoping to do something similar with the FBI,” he said.

Back to Mueller:

Mr. Mueller pointed to the costs of the present situation in human terms.

“The prospect of young men, indoctrinated and radicalized within their own communities, and induced to travel to such countries to take up arms – and to kill themselves and perhaps many others – is a perversion of the immigrant story,” Mr. Mueller said.

It’s not so perverse Mr. Mueller if you guys knew anything about Islam!

Now, just in case my theory is correct and that all these radicalized Somali youths  have not gone back to Somalia, this Washington Times article goes into a discussion about how the FBI was involved in helping India in the wake of the Mumbai attacks, concluding:

Though he declined to speculate about whether a similar attack [to the one in Mumbai] would take place in the U.S., Mr. Mueller said the Mumbai attacks, carried out by 10 terrorists, “reminds us that terrorists with large agendas and little money can use rudimentary weapons to maximize their impact.”

Note to readers (and the FBI):   If  Muellers (CYA) speech gives you comfort that the FBI is on top of the Somali radicalization issue in the US, think again.   They have missed some critical opportunities in one city I know of—Nashville, TN.  Could there be others?

FBI notices Somalis were radicalized in Minnesota; not sure if it’s a problem

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Ann has posted numerous times on the radical American Somalis who went to join the jihad, and tonight I noticed this report in the New York Times, Militants Drew Recruit in U.S., F.B.I. Says.

WASHINGTON — The F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller III, said Monday that a Somali-American man who was one of several suicide bombers in a terrorist attack last October in Somalia had apparently been indoctrinated into his extremist beliefs while living in the United States.

The man, Shirwa Ahmed, was the first known suicide bomber with American citizenship. He immigrated with his family to the Minneapolis area in the mid-1990s, Mr. Mueller said, but he returned to Somalia after he was recruited by a militant group.

“It appears that this individual was radicalized in his hometown in Minnesota,” Mr. Mueller said, speaking at a meeting of the Council on Foreign Relations. Minneapolis claims the country’s largest Somali population.

Mr. Ahmed was driving a vehicle laden with explosives that blew up in northern Somalia in an attack that killed as many as 30 people, according to news reports. His body was returned to the United States with the help of the F.B.I.

Federal authorities have said that Mr. Ahmed was one of as many as two dozen young men of Somali descent who had disappeared in the past two years from their homes in the Minneapolis area after being recruited by the Shabab, a militia that is suspected of having ties to Al Qaeda and that has waged a war against the Somali government.

Mr. Mueller suggested that Somali recruiting posed a serious issue for the F.B.I., which has sought the cooperation of the Somali community to try to understand whether the recruiting represents a threat.

“It raises the question of whether these young men will one day come home, and, if so, what might they undertake here,” he said.

Thanks for noticing, Mr. Mueller.  But can the FBI really not figure out whether a terrorist organization recruiting young men in Minnesota represents a threat? I can save a lot of taxpayer money: Instead of seeking the cooperation of Somalis to find out, just ask me. I’ll tell you without all the bother: The answer is Yes. And the question is, What are you going to do about it?

Palestinians as refugees to the US?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Oh gosh!    This issue doesn’t seem to go away.   Regular readers know that a rumor got started some weeks back about Obama’s use of ERMA funds ($20 million) for Gaza relief.   The rumor, in a nutshell, is that the money was for transporting a 100,000 Palestinians to the US.   I first reported on the ERMA funds here, and Judy did an excellent job of tracking the full story down here.   For more on ERMA generally, go here and scroll down the table of contents.

There are no plans at this time to bring thousands of Palestinian “refugees” to the US.  As a matter of fact, as Judy has pointed out here and here, the reason that 50 years later the Palestinians are kept as refugees is to fuel the never-ending Arab hatred toward Israel.  The Arab countries could have long ago brought peace to the Middle East by absorbing their fellow Arabs, the Palestinians.   They don’t want to, and if we started moving Palestinians in large numbers to the West, they would scream bloody murder.

However, I wouldn’t stake my reputation on what the Obama Administration might try to do.  We could read tomorrow that they are going to do that and I would have to eat my words!

That said, there are a few Palestinians getting into the US.   We have not taken Palestinians in the refugee program prior to 2008.  However, 9 Palestinians are in the database (unpublished) for Refugee Admissions for 2008.   That is out of over 60,000 refugees resettled from around the world.

Also, in a very curious situation that I reported on January 15th of this year, we were bringing Palestinians to the US presumably for a short period of time during the latest war there.  These Palestinians are babies and children who are US citizens!  Their parents are not, and CAIR is helping them.   I speculated that these children may have somehow been born in the US and are thus so-called ‘anchor babies’   So this is something to keep a close eye on.

In a case where we could potentially bring Palestinians to the US, the Palestinians have been living in Iraq and are now in camps along the Iraq/Syria border.   There is quite a lobbying campaign going on to resettle them in the West.  A recent report on this group is here.   Notice that they are speaking the truth and condemning Arab countries for not helping them and keeping them and all Palestinians in limbo.

That’s all I know of, so far.  But, I wanted to be sure our readers knew there are some  Palestinians (a small number) coming as refugees and there is a potential for those Iraqi Palestinians I mentioned to be resettled here, they number in the hundreds, at most a thousand or two.

Somali tricks reported in Australia

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Here is one for our folks at Homeland Security to watch out for, especially as our missing youths might return someday.   Somalis with Australian passports ‘lose’ them while visiting elsewhere…..

Somalis are getting into Australia through “miraculously” lost passports in Malaysia, a Liberal MP has told federal parliament.

Jason Wood, a former Victorian police officer, said he would formally raise the issue with Home Affairs Minister Bob Debus.

Mr Wood said a number of people of Somalian descent holding Australian passports had gone to Malaysia, which had no visa requirements with Somalia.

“What happens there is that they miraculously lose their Australian passports and then a similar looking person gets possession of their passport, and it is still not reported as stolen,” he said.

“The person who now has the stolen passport arrives back into Australia and gets through customs.

“My enquiries show that the normal process, which happens after two or three days, is that the person applies for refugee status to get all the benefits.

“The person of Somalian origin who had the Australian passport issued then reports the passport stolen in Malaysia.

And, presumably then gets back into Australia too!

Maryland Immigration lawyer found guilty of fraud

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

There is always so much to write about and so little time.   This story is over a week old, but better late then  never. 

We told you some time ago that there was a whole industry developing around the Asylum business.   Asylees basically either got into the US illegally or present themselves at some port of entry as an asylee.  An asylee is someone who is afraid if he or she returns to their home country they will in some way be persecuted and in danger.   If granted asylum, the immigrant can avail himself of all the perks and privileges of the refugee program.

Last year Patrick Tzeuton was indicted for falsifying documents of clients who sought asylum and earlier this month he was convicted.   Tzeuton himself is from Africa and most of his clients were as well.   From the Washington Post:

A Silver Spring lawyer was convicted in federal court yesterday on charges of fabricating asylum applications for immigrants trying to stay in the United States.

Patrick G. Tzeuton, 42, who is from Cameroon and worked with many people from West Africa, signed off on clients’ fraudulent paperwork and coached them to lie during interviews with immigration lawyers, prosecutors said.

During a four-week trial in U.S. District Court in Greenbelt, prosecutors alleged that Tzeuton carried out the scheme from 2002 to 2005.

Tzeuton was taken into custody after the jury’s verdict and is scheduled to be sentenced April 29 by Judge Peter J. Messitte. Tzeuton faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison for conspiracy, 10 years for immigration fraud and 20 years for obstruction of official proceedings.

More information on how Tzeuton perpetrated the fraud is here, at a Dept. of Justice press release at the time of his indictment.

Defendants Allegedly Coached Aliens to Tell False Stories of Fear of Persecution

Tzeuton operated a law firm known as the Law Offices of Patrick Tzeuton & Associates (the “Tzeuton Law Firm”) located at 8121 Georgia Avenue, Suite 102 in Silver Spring and 8401 Colesville Road also in Silver Spring, which employed Henri Nzone as a legal assistant. Tzeuton represented hundreds of clients as an attorney in immigration matters before U.S. immigration officials.

According to the 15 count indictment, from May 2002 to at least October 2005, Tzeuton and Nzone prepared false asylum applications, together with false and fraudulent supporting affidavits and documents, and presented them to the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), and the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR). The asylum applications contained false statements regarding (1) the alleged basis for the alien’s fear of future persecution in his or her home country; (2) the date and circumstances of the alien’s entries into the United States; and (3) the alien’s marital status, spouse, and children. In addition, Nzone translated and notarized false and fraudulent letters purporting to be from the alien’s relatives and other witnesses; and included false and fraudulent documents bearing forged notary stamps and signatures.

Ironically Tzeuton is quoted in a Washington Post story from 2005 saying he welcomed more scrutiny of the growing Immigration Consultant business.

Now, here is one of the questions I have, what happens to all those asylees Tzeuton coached to lie and were then granted the right to stay in the United States.   Do they get prosecuted for immigration fraud or do they just get to stay?

And, here is the other question.  How many Patrick Tzeutons are out there?  We granted asylum to 81,183 asylees in 2007 alone.  How many of those were legitimate?