“They went through terror themselves, so I couldn’t imagine them inflicting that on anyone else.”

(Barbara Smith, former Catholic Refugee Agency employee, told the court)

 
Again and again, I hear from citizen activists who tell me that their local refugee advocates/contractors or interfaith groups are spreading the tall tale that refugees admitted to the US have no record of committing crimes.  I know it is preposterous, but they continue to spread the lie.
To give them the benefit of the doubt, maybe they really don’t know the truth because in fact the mainstream media has gone out of its way to not report refugee crimes on a national level. Yes, local TV and print media do report the crimes, but rarely have these stories made it to even the cable networks.
So, because there is no central clearing house of refugee crimes/terror arrests etc., I’ll try to re-cap some cases every few days.  You might also want to visit my ‘Crimes’ category to do some research yourselves, but I warn you it is huge!

Today, let’s go over the story of the 2009 Roanoke kidnapping plot thwarted by the quick-thinking would-be victim. 

I’m especially interested in this story today because the perps should have finished their prison sentences some time ago and I wonder if they have been deported as was originally announced they would be.  (See my previous post on deportations to Africa)
Thank goodness I snipped a lot of the 2009 story about the Roanoke kidnapping because the original link is now dead. For details on what the Roanoke REFUGEES plotted to do, see the FBI press release here (May 8, 2009).
My post from November 3, 2009:

Yesterday a judge in Roanoke, Virginia sentenced four former refugees to short prison sentences and deportation when they are released from prison in the attempted kidnapping case that shocked rural Virginia.

From the Roanoke Times (link is now dead):

The plot was bizarre, carefully planned and amateurishly executed: To make money in America, three young men from refugee families set out to find a wealthy woman, abduct her from her home and hold her for ransom.

It all unraveled as soon as Audrey Levicki answered the door to her Southwest Roanoke County home.

Suspicious that the two men were not the Red Cross volunteers they claimed to be, Levicki braced the door with her foot and then slammed it shut on the arm of the one who tried to reach inside.

The two men ran off, despite months of planning and a getaway car waiting at the end of the driveway with rope, handcuffs and other tools of a kidnapping. The duo was quickly arrested along with two accomplices, setting in motion a series of unintended consequences that culminated Monday at a sentencing hearing in U.S. District Court in Roanoke.

Levicki, whose intended fate was to be held in a rundown camper until her captors could collect up to $1 million from her corporate executive husband, said that she is now a prisoner in her own home.

“My life went to hell on April 6,” Levicki said in a statement to Judge James Turk, recounting how the incident led to fearful days, sleepless nights and a loss of security so profound that she no longer ventures outside to feed the dog unless armed with a baseball bat.

For the three African natives who tried to kidnap Levicki — Luke Musa Elbino, 20; Mohammed Hussein Guhad, 20; and Joshua Kasongo, 19 — the consequences went beyond the five-and-a-half-year prison terms they received at the end of a daylong hearing.

Once they are released from prison, the three face almost certain deportation back to Somalia, Sudan and Rwanda — countries their families fled when they were boys to escape civil war and genocide.

Then here is the ultimate in liberal do-gooder hubris:

“They went through terror themselves, so I couldn’t imagine them inflicting that on anyone else,” Barbara Smith, the retired head of the nonprofit Refugee and Immigration Services* office in Roanoke, said while testifying for the defendants.

People like Smith assume that when the US shows kindness, the kindness will be returned.  She can’t believe that young men plucked from the hell hole of Africa could bite the hand that feeds them.

Go here for more of that November 2009 post.
So there we go, refugee criminals (it is a good thing they were really dumb!). Where are they today? Back in Africa or walking the streets of Anytown, USA?
Recommendation for citizens in ‘pockets of resistance:’ consider, as one of our readers did, making a poster or handout with refugee crime/terrorist cases.  Pick maybe the top ten you find on these pages or elsewhere and have it handy to distribute.