Why wasn’t Iraqi criminal deported?

That is the question that is coming up regarding the Iraqi refugee who bombed the Arizona Social Security Office last week, hereWhy didn’t we deport him the first time he committed a crime?

Over the years, I can’t point to one case (coming to my attention) of a criminal refugee being deported.  That is not to say it hasn’t been done.  The subject has come up frequently relating to Somali criminals, but one person ‘in the know’ who did work in the refugee field tells me it isn’t done—basically that we are squishes about sending refugees back to “dangerous” places.  I guess never mind that the person might be dangerous to us.

You should know that Canada has no fear of deporting criminal Somalis back to Somalia as we reported here in 2010—dropped the gangbanger right in the heart of Mogadishu!

There is a US Supreme Court decision in January 2005, here, in which the Court said a refugee criminal could indeed be deported to Somalia or to another country (gosh, who would want him!).

In the case of the Arizona refugee, Abdullatif Aldosary, if he has been here for years as some news accounts are saying, then he could be a US citizen.  But, LOL!, guess he is one more refugee who didn’t appreciate the good life we gave him.

Don’t you think it’s interesting that for a decade and more (during the Clinton Presidency and after) we were bringing in thousands of Iraqis to escape that evil Saddam Hussein.  Then we get rid of the despot (who was creating the refugees), give them a democratically elected government and we are now bringing in an ever larger number of refugees—does that make sense?

This story reminded me that we have never done a thorough accounting of all the Iraqis we’ve brought to the US (as I did with Somalis here several years ago).  So I started to search for the numbers and see that the Office of Refugee Resettlement no longer has eight years of annual reports available on line, see here (not to mention the fact that they are three years late for the recent ones!)  So pulling the numbers together is going to be a challenge—-will put it on my to-do list!

Here are some recent numbers:

Iraqi refugees resettled in 2008:  13,822

In 2009:  18,838

In 2010:  18,016

In 2011 (slowed due to Kentucky terror arrests):  9,388

Total for just those 4 years:   60,064

Those numbers come from these reports, here and here.  (Annual Flow Reports from DHS).  You might also find this Iraqi fact sheet of interest at USCIS.

Readers!  Are any of you interested in writing a book on Iraqi refugees—we’ve done your research for you!  This is the 548th post in our Iraqi Refugee category!

Spread the love

Leave a Reply