State Department Admits Massive Fraud in Iraqi Refugee Program

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

We reported that an investigation was underway, here in February:

Biden Admin Halts Special Refugee Program for Iraqis Due to Fraud Bust

However, now the international corporate media is admitting it.

But, you need to know that this isn’t the first and won’t be the last admission that fraud is rampant in the US Refugee Admissions Program. 

Longtime readers may remember the moratorium on Somalis entering the US that began back in 2008 when the State Department uncovered fraud in the family reunification program—oopsy the Somalis claiming to be family members weren’t even kissing cousins.

I followed that scam investigation:

State Department: Possibly tens of thousands of Somalis in the US illegally

In 2007, I first told readers about how Ted Kennedy secretively tacked the Special Iraqi program onto a must-pass Defense Authorization bill in the dark of night.

How many Iraqi refugees will be resettled in Hyannisport?

So here we are nearly 50,000 Iraqis later…

From Reuters this morning just in time for UN-designated World Refugee Day on Sunday:

Mark Hetfield, CEO of HIAS (formerly Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society) one of nine federal resettlement contractors*** is quoted as saying:

“Resettlement is a very scarce and valuable and lifesaving commodity,” said Mark Hetfield, president of HIAS, a refugee resettlement agency.

“People … are going to do anything they can to access it.”

 

EXCLUSIVE U.S. suspects 4,000 cases of fraud in Iraqi refugee program -documents

WASHINGTON, June 18 (Reuters) – U.S. authorities pursuing a sweeping fraud investigation suspect some 4,000 Iraqis of filing fraudulent applications for resettlement in the United States as refugees, and they are re-examining cases involving more than 104,000 others, according to State Department reports reviewed by Reuters.

More than 500 Iraqis already admitted as refugees have been implicated in the alleged fraud and could be deported or stripped of their U.S. citizenship, according to one document sent to members of Congress. It said there was “no indication to date that any of these 500+ individuals have ties to terrorism.”

The probe – one of the biggest into refugee program fraud in recent history – is fueling reservations among some in Joe Biden’s administration as they debate whether to create a similar program to assist Afghan refugees as American troops withdraw after 20 years of war, U.S. officials told Reuters.

The reports show the investigation is more far-reaching and serious than U.S. officials have disclosed since announcing in January a 90-day freeze of the Iraqi “Direct Access” refugee program. The suspension, which in April was extended indefinitely by the State Department, followed the unsealing of an indictment accusing three foreign nationals of fraud, records theft and money laundering.

A State Department spokesperson declined to comment on the scope of the investigation and internal government deliberations, but said the fraud scheme did not affect security vetting of refugees.

“The discovery, investigation, and prosecution of individuals involved in the scheme demonstrated the U.S. government’s commitment to ensuring the integrity of the program while upholding our humanitarian tradition,” the spokesperson said. “Those who would seek to take advantage of America’s generosity in welcoming the most vulnerable people will be held accountable.”

The spokesperson did not give a timeline for the investigation, but said the agency would work “as quickly and thoroughly as possible” to complete the review and make any necessary security changes.

Now this next part doesn’t make any sense to me because we are already bringing tens of thousands of Afghans here in the Special Immigrant Visa Program, the same one that the Iraqis used.

Here is one post on the Afghans from 2019:

Special Immigrant Visa Holders Coming in by the Thousands from Afghanistan, but Iraqi Flow has Slowed

You can see here that over 2,000 Afghans have been admitted in just the present fiscal year. How many did your state ‘welcome?’

Back to Reuters:

Under pressure from lawmakers of both parties and advocacy groups, the Biden administration is considering a similar program for Afghans facing Taliban retribution, according to a State Department official, a congressional aide and a lawmaker.

But there “are a lot of reservations” about expediting the resettlement of Afghans as refugees in the United States, said the State Department official, citing the problems with the Iraqi program.

There is much, much more so continue reading here.

I just took a trip down memory lane and see that I have a lot of posts on the Special Immigrant Visa Program and here is one in particular you should see.  Obama Judge rules that we aren’t bringing sufficient numbers of Iraqis and Afghans!

Judge Says Trump Admin Not Moving Fast Enough Bringing in Iraqi and Afghan Special Visa Holders

 

***In case you are new to RRW, here are the nine contractors that have monopolized all refugee distribution in the US for decades.

When President Trump reduced the number of regular refugees being admitted, he did continue the Iraq and Afghan special refugees program and the contractors, we learned, were surviving off their payouts to resettle them.

Foreigners First! is their motto.

Here They Come! Ethiopian Resettlement Contractor Wants More Refugees in Small Town Vermont

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

And, so does Vermont’s Republican Governor Phil Scott who has (according to the AP) asked Harris/Biden for more refugees!

It is surprising isn’t it that Vermont, the homeland of Bernie Socialist Sanders really hasn’t ‘welcomed’ very many refugees compared even to other states of a similar size, but all of that might change starting in October.

What is happening in October? 

The Harris/Biden team says they will increase refugee admissions for FY2022 which begins October first to 125,000.  That would be the highest annual refugee cap in decades—more than Obama ever dreamed of!  And, now the hunt is on for their new homes.

This article from the Associated Press would have you believe small cities were never the lucky recipients of third world diversity, but that just isn’t so.

And, by the way, know also that the AP reporter has transposed the words in the name of the organization.  It should be the Ethiopian Community Development Council known widely in the refugee industry as ECDC, a long time member of the big nine contractors*** that monopolize all resettlement and have done so for decades.

Targeted Brattleboro, VT, population 11,000

Readers may remember that an effort to make Rutland, Vermont, another small city in the white state, a home for impoverished refugees exploded into a huge controversy in 2016 that ultimately saw the pro-refugee mayor ousted.

See my Vermont archive by clicking here.

Know that this hunt for fresh territory is going on everywhere (except maybe Wyoming, but folks there need to be on the look-out) as the contractors must submit their plans to the US State Department by late summer so they can be competitive with other refugee contractors and get their allotment of paying clients (aka refugees) starting October first. 

Wausau, Wisconsin is also on the target list according to this report.

From AP at US News:

Refugee Resettlement Nonprofit Plans New Programs in Vermont

BRATTLEBORO, Vt. (AP) — A refugee resettlement nonprofit has plans to start a new program in Vermont to relocate refugees in smaller, more rural communities across the United States.

The Ethiopian Development Community Council, a nonprofit agency that partners with the State Department to resettle refugees in the U.S., wants to launch its program in Brattleboro because of the city’s support. The first families should arrive in the city before the end of the year if the program is approved by the federal government, Vermont Public Radio reported Monday.

The nonprofit has also chosen Wausau [Wisconsin–ed] to test out the program, pending federal approval.

The nonprofit is preparing for an influx of refugees since the Biden Administration has promised to increase the number of refugees allowed in the country and reopen the refugee resettlement program that the previous Trump Administration imposed restrictions on, the radio station reported.

Tsehaye Teferra

“If we want to create integration of refugees, having them only in big cities where they would be congregating among themselves, only, is not going to help long-term integration,” said Tsehaye Tefera, the founder of the Ethiopian Development Community Council.

That may sound like a nice sentiment but in reality refugees resettled in smaller cities generally migrate after a few months to larger cities because they want to live in enclaves with their own kind of people!

The most visible of the ethnic groups, partaking of what the industry calls secondary migration, are the Somalis loading up Minnesota.

Back to AP at US News….

Social and economic organizations in Windham County have been supportive, but efforts to resettle refugees in Vermont have been controversial in the past, Vermont Public Radio reported.

Elwell was formerly the manager in Palm Beach County, Florida.

Brattleboro town manager Peter Elwell said he knows there could be opposition to the resettlement program, but regardless, the plan is in line with the town’s priority to improve equity in one of the whitest states in the country.

Earlier this year, Gov. Phil Scott asked the State Department to increase the refugee cap in Vermont.

Scott called refugee resettlement “an integral part of our efforts to grow Vermont’s economy.”

 

However, see this report from FAIR which examined the ten smallest immigrant population states and determined that increasing the percentage of migrants going to the state would have an outsized negative impact on the economy and on the social fabric of the state.

You might be interested to know that ECDC is likely the smallest of the big nine resettlement contractors and generally over the years has kept a low political profile as others of the contractors, most notably HIAS, LIRS and Church World Service, were out making political noise and suing the Trump Administration.

However, much to my surprise Teferra took a public swipe at Trump here in July of 2020.

Virginia: Ethiopian Community Development Council Prez Speaks Out Against Trump Admin

You will see in that post that the ‘non-profit’ organization is effectively a government agency as almost the entirety of its $13 million budget comes from you, the US taxpayers.

 

***In case you are new to RRW, here are all of the nine contractors that have monopolized all refugee distribution in the US for decades.

They worked to ‘elect’ Biden/Harris and lobby for open borders.  As taxpayers you pay them millions annually to change America by changing the people.

Two of the contractors, the USCCB and Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service are also paid to find locations for the Unaccompanied Alien Children.

At this very moment they are all out scouting for new, fresh territory in which to place their refugee clients.  See Winchester, VA.

Foreigners First! is their motto!

 

It is Imperative a North Korean Refugee’s Voice is Heard

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

“It (her time in the Ivy League) was chaos. It felt like the regression in civilization.”

(Yeonmi Park)

 

Yeonmi Park doesn’t call herself a refugee because she doesn’t believe in victimhood, but if anyone deserves to be a legitimate refugee, she fits the bill.

She is a defector from North Korea who is blowing the whistle on American universities, and America’s direction these days toward a political system she risked her life to escape as a young teen.

Frankly, she is risking her life again by speaking so forcefully against the educational system ruling America right now.

Before I read this story at Fox News this morning, I had plans to write something else.  However, Park’s story contrasts so sharply with the post I wrote yesterday about a Somali refugee victim, a social justice warrior, who wants to turn America into Somalia, the hellhole country she supposedly escaped.

Seattle: A Decade after Threatening to Blow Up a School Bus, Somali Refugee Running for County Council

Honestly I fear for Park in the present climate where xenophobic and racist African Americans are attacking Asians on the streets most especially in New York City.

From Fox News (hat tip: Paul):

North Korean defector says ‘even North Korea was not this nuts’ after attending Ivy League school

As American educational institutions continue to be called into question, a North Korean defector fears the United States’ future “is as bleak as North Korea” after she attended one of the country’s most prestigious universities.

Yeonmi Park has experienced plenty of struggle and hardship, but she does not call herself a victim.

In her 2015 memoir “she described what it took to survive in one of the world’s most brutal dictatorships and the harrowing journey to freedom.”

One of several hundred North Korean defectors settled in the United States, Park, 27, transferred to Columbia University from a South Korean university in 2016 and was deeply disturbed by what she found.

“I expected that I was paying this fortune, all this time and energy, to learn how to think. But they are forcing you to think the way they want you to think,” Park said in an interview with Fox News. “I realized, wow, this is insane. I thought America was different but I saw so many similarities to what I saw in North Korea that I started worrying.”

Those similarities include anti-Western sentiment, collective guilt and suffocating political correctness.

Yeonmi saw red flags immediately upon arriving at the school.

During orientation, she was scolded by a university staff member for admitting she enjoyed classic literature such as Jane Austen.

“I said ‘I love those books.’ I thought it was a good thing,” recalled Park.

“Then she said, ‘Did you know those writers had a colonial mindset? They were racists and bigots and are subconsciously brainwashing you.’”

[….]

After getting into a number of arguments with professors and students, eventually Yeonmi “learned how to just shut up” in order to maintain a good GPA and graduate.

[….]

Having come to America with high hopes and expectations, Yeonmi expressed her disappointment.

“You guys have lost common sense to degree that I as a North Korean cannot even comprehend,” she said.

“Where are we going from here?” she wondered. “There’s no rule of law, no morality, nothing is good or bad anymore, it’s complete chaos.”

“I guess that’s what they want, to destroy every single thing and rebuild into a Communist paradise.”

There is more, read it all.

Seattle: A Decade after Threatening to Blow Up a School Bus, Somali Refugee Running for County Council

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Here we go again…. move over Ilhan Omar!

The story from The Blaze:

Leftist political candidate once threatened to blow up school bus, called children ‘white cowards’ as they fled: court docs

A political candidate in Washington once threatened to blow up a school bus full of children, and when the students attempted to flee the potentially deadly situation she called the kids “white cowards,” according to court documents.

Ubax Gardheere is running for the King County Council in the Seattle area. Gardheere is the director of the Equitable Development Division in Seattle’s Office of Planning and Community Development, which works with organizations on “anti-displacement efforts in high displacement risk neighborhoods, with a continued emphasis on serving BIPOC communities that have been targeted by systemic and institutional racism.”

Gardheere labels herself as a community organizer “focused on policy and systemic healing.” Gardheere, who calls herself a “bureactivist,” says she has “extensive experience in social justice and transformative practices.”

[….]

On Jan. 12, 2010, Gardheere allegedly boarded a school bus while it was transporting children to the Chinook Middle School. “Gardheere demanded the driver tell his dispatcher ‘that a national security incident was going on,'” according to a new report from the Post Millennial.

Gardheere, who is a Somali immigrant, began yelling at the children about America’s relationship with Somalia, according to police reports.

The school bus driver instructed Gardheere to exit the vehicle, but she retaliated by saying that she may have a bomb and a gun, the court docs say.

“You need to calm yourselves down ’cause I could have a bomb. Look how loose my clothes are,” Gardheere said, according to an audio recording of the incident described in court documents.

I’ve highlighted that line above because just yesterday at my local women’s shooting club meeting we were instructed on “situational awareness” and told to be more observant about clothing that could hide a weapon (obviously Gardheere was aware of the advantages of her Somali clothes).  In our case yesterday we were instructed that someone wearing an item of winter clothing on a hot summer day might be of concern.

But I digress, back to the story….

Gardheere was hit with felony charges of kidnapping, but worked out a plea deal with prosecutors to get the felonies down to a misdemeanor.

A few weeks after she made veiled threats to bomb a middle school bus with children onboard, Gardheere gave an interview to Seattle Weekly. Gardheere told the paper that she was suffering from postpartum depression after the birth of her son three years earlier.

“She said her mental condition worsened after she stopped in Dubai to see in-laws on her way to visit Somalia in 2008,” the article from January 2010 said. “Then, according to her account, she was nearly raped by someone at the house where she was staying–and beaten up by police when she tried to report the incident.”

Continue reading.

She writes-off the school bus terrorism as temporary mental illness.

Her mental illness aside, here is the big question for me!

(See her campaign website where she discusses her refugee status.)

If she was admitted to the US as a starving refugee at age 15, her family would have told the UN and the US State Department that they would be persecuted in Somalia and that they feared for their safety if they were forced to return to their home country.

Then why was she returning to Somalia for a visit in 2008? 

Which begs the next question—why was she a refugee admitted to America in the first place if she can just pop back there for a social visit?

Rep. Ilhan Omar did the same thing!

Is Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar a Poster Child for Refugee Fraud?

This returning to the home country (where a refugee claims they were persecuted) for a “visit” is common practice among Somalis and some other refugee frauds as well.

In my dreams I see deportation for any ‘refugee’ who returns to the country they claimed they were escaping!

Curious about a time-line for Gardheere, here is a brief summary of what I found.  I couldn’t quickly find an article reporting her age, but did find that she was 29 when she terrorized the school children in 2010, and she admits she was 15 when she was resettled as a refugee.

That makes her around 40 years old today.

She describes herself as a single mother with three children and I wondered where might hubby be now. She did have in-laws in Dubai in 2008, or so she says.

(Wondering about Somalis in Dubai, I learned that there are many prosperous Somalis doing business between Dubai and Mogadishu, so was Gardheere a legitimate refugee?)

We assume she was resettled in the Seattle area because unfortunately for Americans there, the area was a prime resettlement site for Somalis.  Not as huge as Minneapolis, but up in the top 5 or so for sure.

I went back to one of the most-read posts of my nearly 14 years writing this blog, and see that she was likely ‘welcomed’ to America in 1996 during Bill Clinton’s term in office.

How did we get so many Somali refugees—the numbers are telling

It is a shame that I stopped updating that post in 2016, because as I reported previously, the data is now not available to the public except possibly in Annual Reports to Congress  and available there only up to 2018.

 

As They Call for Senate Hearings, Republican Governors’ Outrage is a Joke

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Governors Kim Reynolds of Iowa and Bill Lee of Tennessee want the Senate to hold hearings on what they see as an outrageous affront to states’ rights as the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement is flying Unaccompanied Alien Children (refugee wannabes) in and out of their states with no communication with the governor or state officials.

We all know that a Senate hearing is nothing but a useless piece of political theater that won’t accomplish smack, but these grandstanding Republican governors obviously think they can trick you into believing they are doing something!

Is it any wonder we have such disdain for Republican governors like Reynolds.

And, what makes me steam over this little temper tantrum by Reynolds and Lee is that they had a chance to take a stand for states’ rights on the issue of the federal government dumping refugees on states and communities back when Trump was attempting to give them more rights (actually give them the rights they are due under our US Constitution) and they snubbed their noses at him.

Trump was trying to give them a chance to say they needed a break from refugees being placed in their states by the feds and unelected non-profit group actors, and they turned him down.

Only Governor Abbott of Texas outright supported Trump’s reform effort and said he would not consent for 2020.

Here is Reynold’s attempting to make you think she is working for Iowans by demanding a Senate hearing—what a joke!—typical oily political move.

From the Ames Tribune:

19 migrant children had a layover in an Iowa airport. Gov. Kim Reynolds wants Congress to get answers

With no notice to the state, at least 19 unaccompanied children were transported in an overnight flight through Des Moines from California in April, Gov. Kim Reynolds confirmed Thursday, saying she wants to know more details.

After deplaning, the children were taken on two buses to be transported to various locations for unification, according to a Thursday news release from Reynolds’ office.

“We weren’t able to get any answers about why there were chartered planes coming in the middle of night — chartered buses — and unaccompanied minors removed from the plane and then transported outside of the state,” Reynolds told reporters Thursday.

[….]

In April, a total of 163 unaccompanied migrant children were released to sponsors in Iowa, according to the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement statistics.

[….]

Good ol’ country boy, Lee with his pick ’em up truck.

Reynolds and  Lee — who says unaccompanied minor children were brought to his state in May without any notification — wrote the joint letter to Grassley in support of the senator’s demands for a Senate Judiciary Hearing into the situation on the U.S. southern border with Mexico.

More: Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee wants U.S. Senate to hold hearings on unaccompanied minors

Gov. Bill Lee is asking the U.S. Senate to investigate the arrival of unaccompanied migrant children in Tennessee, a request that comes as the Republican governor continues to slam the Biden administration over a lack of transparency on the issue.

Lee and Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds, a fellow Republican, sent the letter on Thursday to U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa. Grassley in April requested that Senate Democrats hold hearings to discuss the influx of migrants at the southern border since President Joe Biden took office.

 

Their demand for a hearing is easy. 

Their demand for “transparency” is their way of making you, voting citizens of Iowa and Tennessee, think that they are doing something, but when given a chance to really take a stand for a state’s right to know who is being placed in their states by the feds, and have an opportunity to say no, they just didn’t have the guts.

Albeit it was a different type of ‘refugee’…they are all refugees now, right!  This letter below is what Reynolds sent to Trump’s Secretary of State.

Notice no interest even in finding out who is coming and how many.

So why would the present administration think they had to confer with these heretofore ‘welcoming’ Republican governors?

 

And, here is Lee’s letter that caused an uproar in Tennessee.

 

 

Texas Governor Abbot wrote a detailed letter that ended with him not giving consent to refugees being placed by the feds in Texas for FY2020.

Both Kemp of Georgia and DeSantis of Florida remained silent.

Word is that the Trump people were very shocked and disappointed that most Republican governors turned down the President’s attempt to give them more say, to give them some modicum of states’ rights, in advance of a refugee drop.

If you are wondering whatever happened to that reform effort via a Trump executive order, the refugee resettlement contractors (below) sued and stopped the initiative dead in its tracks.