Here is the hot news this morning. The LA Times has a more detailed account of the story that broke overnight, than some other news outlets (maybe CA is getting a little more sensitive to the terrorists living in their midst).
The two Iraqis are actually Palestinians who had been living in Iraq. By the way, we only bring a small number of Palestinians to the US as refugees. And, it is not clear to me if one or either of these actually became refugees by arriving here through some other means and then granted asylum. I guess only their federal resettlement contractor knows for sure!
However, in all likelihood at least one of the two came from our special resettlement project for Palestinians when back in 2009 the US State Department agreed to bring in 1,350 Iraqi Palestinians to your neighborhoods.
It was quite big news at the time. And, the issue was that these were Palestinians Saddam Hussein had invited to live in Iraq and once the regime fell, no one wanted them.
Because of his arrival date, at least one of the two alleged Islamic terrorists could have been in that group. Here is what we said in 2009.
Now, the LA Times:
A man who came to the U.S. as an Iraqi refugee was arrested in Sacramento on Thursday on suspicion of lying about fighting alongside terrorist organizations in Syria, federal authorities said.
On the same day, federal authorities in Houston announced that an Iraqi refugee in Texas, who had been communicating online with the man in California, was charged with attempting to provide support to the militant group Islamic State.
The allegations against two men residing in the U.S. with links to foreign terrorist groups comes as the nation reels from the Dec. 2 shooting in San Bernardino, which left 14 dead. That is considered the deadliest terrorist act on U.S. soil since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
And the arrests of two refugees from Iraq, part of a wave of about 103,000*** Iraqi refugees admitted from 2006 to 2014, is likely to add fuel to the debate over whether the U.S. should welcome refugees from Syria, and if so, whether the screening process is adequate.
The man living in Sacramento, Aws Mohammed Younis Al-Jayab, 23, had reported in private messages on social media that he fought alongside various groups in Syria, including Ansar al-Islam, a Sunni terrorist group and an affiliate of Al Qaeda, according to a federal complaint filed Wednesday and unsealed Thursday.
There is much more here…..
Because of the ages at which these two must have arrived in the US (as teenagers), it shows how ludicrous the discussion about vetting refugees can be when they are obviously becoming more devout after they get here (I refuse to use the word radicalized!).
And, these two are not the first, remember there is another pair of Iraqi refugee terrorists in federal prison. See our complete archive on the Kentucky terrorists by clicking here.
The only way to make sure we are completely safe is to stop the migration from terror-producing Islamic countries!
*** I’ve been meaning to check out the numbers for Iraq for some time.
Using the State Department’s data base I went back to 2007 and grabbed a map from then until December 31, 2015. The Bush Administration was slow to admit Iraqi refugees, but opened the door in its last year in office. The Obama Administration has made Iraqis the largest group of refugees we admit each year since then.
Here is where 127,906 Iraqis have been resettled since 2007 (remember though that this does not mean they stayed where the contractors originally seeded them).
Top five states:
California (26,343)
Michigan (19,186)
Texas (12,314)
Illinois (7,336)
Massachusetts (4,322)
And, because it isn’t far behind (for my VA friends), Virginia (4,158)
For ambitious readers, our Iraqi refugee category has 675 previous posts archived there!