The lack of transparency that surrounds the resettlement of third world refugees through the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program is likely the single-most important factor in why I have been writing about it for nine years. Almost nothing makes me so angry as the arrogant treatment of citizens in towns across the country as refugees are placed in communities with no advance warning in most cases and certainly no thoughtful discussion and planning.
For decades the only way citizens learned of the program was when it was already up and running and problems had occurred and here we learn from the Lowell, Massachusetts city manager that they have had the same experience.
BTW, controversies like the one on-going in Rutland, VT actually started the same way—a mayor secretively worked with the federal government to ‘welcome’ Syrians to town, and when the residents found out all hell broke loose directed mostly at the mayor for acting secretively.
Here is the latest news from Leo Hohmann at World Net Daily who tells us about some excellent reporting from the Lowell Sun on that case from last week where a Syrian man was arrested for allegedly making advances at a 13-year-old at a public swimming pool.
The secrecy of the federal refugee-resettlement program has once again been highlighted by a local official who has seen the dark side of the program play out in living color.
In Lowell, Massachusetts, a 13-year-old girl was twice groped at a public pool last week by a 22-year-old man freshly imported into the community from Syria as a “refugee.”
The city manager of Lowell told his local newspaper Tuesday that he was not even notified by the U.S. State Department or its resettlement contractor that Syrians were being delivered to his community.
Emad Hasso, 22, of Syria pleaded not guilty Friday to inappropriately touching the girl at the state-run Raymond Lord Memorial Pool in Lowell, according to the Lowell Sun.
This marks the second high-profile sexual assault on an American girl in the past month by a refugee. On June 2, a 5-year-old girl in Twin Falls, Idaho, was reportedly raped by an Iraqi refugee boy while an older refugee from Sudan filmed and coached him during the assault.
Hasso is one of 18 Syrians, all of them most likely Sunni Muslims, who have been secretly planted in the Lowell community since May, according to the State Department’s Refugee Processing Center online database.
City Manager Kevin Murphy said he’d like to receive regular numbers from the federal contractor that resettles refugees in the city. The International Institute subcontracts with the main federal contractor, U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, or USCRI, to deliver refugees to Lowell.
The city does not know when or from where refugees come to Lowell, Murphy said, and is only made aware of them in instances like this one where a refugee gets arrested or otherwise singled out for bad behavior.
“I think we’ll reach out to the International Institute to see if they could cooperate with us in the future by letting us know when they relocate individuals to Lowell,” Murphy said.
Good luck with that!
There is much more here, including a list of the cities where large numbers of Syrian Muslims (yes, they are 99% Muslim and mostly Sunnis) have been placed this year, continue here.
By the way USCRI is the primary federal contractor and the International Institute is a sub-contractor. Be sure to see this older post when USCRI’s office was ultimately closed in Waterbury, CT (they weren’t caring properly for the refugees they had placed). See why I referred to Limon for years as ‘whoop-de-do.’
One more thing that will interest you folks in Idaho. Click here to view a copyrighted photo of Lavinia Limon with the CEO of Chobani Yogurt at the Clinton Global Initiative last September. They are all in this together—MONEY!