Here we go again! It sure looks like the Trump Justice Department has launched a campaign to ferret out those who fraudulently got in to the US claiming they were refugees. (Reminds me to start watching DOJ press announcements on a daily basis!)
Michael Patrick Leahy at Breitbart has penned another post within days of telling us about the Iraqi refugee arrested in California. In that case the government alleges that the Iraqi was a member of ISIS when he arrived here from Turkey.
Here we learn that the DOJ is alleging that this refugee was not abused and persecuted, but was himself a human rights abuser.
Report: Ethiopian Refugee Arrested for Fraudulent U.S. Citizenship, Was Interrogator During ‘Red Terror’
Special agents from the Department of Homeland Security arrested an Ethiopian refugee after he was indicted on Tuesday on felony charges of allegedly fraudulently obtaining U.S. citizenship.
“Mergia Negussie Habteyes, 58, is charged in an indictment, which was returned by a grand jury for the Eastern District of Virginia on Aug. 14, alleging that Negussie told a series of lies to U.S. immigration authorities in the course of obtaining authority to enter the United States as a refugee, subsequently obtaining lawful permanent-resident status, and ultimately obtaining U.S. citizenship,” The Department of Justice(DOJ) said in a statement released on Friday:
Specifically, the indictment asserts that, when he applied for naturalization in the United States, Negussie falsely stated that he never persecuted persons because of their political opinion, and he failed to disclose that he had committed a crime or offense for which he was not arrested.
In fact, according to the indictment, Negussie served as a civilian interrogator in the Higher 3 prison in Ethiopia in the late 1970s, during a period known as the Red Terror. In that role, Negussie is alleged to have participated in the persecution, through brutality, of individuals imprisoned because of their political opinion.
Additionally, Negussie falsely stated that he never gave false or misleading information to any U.S. government official while applying for any immigration benefit and that he never lied to U.S. immigration authorities to gain entry or admission into the United States and to obtain immigration benefits.
News of the arrest of the Ethiopian refugee in Virginia on felony charges follows the announcement this week of the arrest of an Iraqi refugee and alleged Islamic State murderer in California, who was charged with lying on his refugee application and now faces an extradition hearing based on a warrant for the 2014 of an Iraqi police officer issued by an Iraqi judge in May of this year.
The Washington Post has a short article yesterday, but doesn’t give us any additional information.
I want to know exactly when he was admitted to the US as a refugee. I would also love to know which resettlement agency placed him, but that is something we rarely ever hear. An exception is the recent case of the Iraqi who shot a police officer in Colorado where we learned it was Lutheran Social Services that was his caretaker upon arrival.
By the way, over the years we have brought in a huge number of refugees from Ethiopia and even one of the nine contractors is the Ethiopian Community Development Council (head quarters located in Virginia).
This post is filed in my ‘Crimes’ category along with 2,000 plus other stories involving refugee and immigrant crimes here and around the world.