Tag: refugee resettlement program

San Diego: Somali woman sentenced to 8 years for helping terror group

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

And, that is not all!  She is laughingly predicting another (and more deadly) 9/11 to happen to the country that took her in as a poor and suffering refugee.

I saw several accounts of this short story (even one in the Washington Post), but no publication except the LA Times (blog!) kept that little nugget of news in its story.

Here it is:

A 25-year-old Somali woman living in San Diego was sentenced Tuesday to eight years in prison after pleading guilty to sending money to a suspected terrorist group in her native country.

Nima Yusuf admitted in San Diego federal court that she sent $1,450 to men in Somalia who were fighting on behalf of al-Shabaab, considered a terrorist group by the U.S. government. She also admitted trying to recruit a local man to go to Somalia to fight for al-Shabaab.

According to FBI wiretaps, Yusuf was pleased when told in a phone call by another Somali that al-
Shabaab had killed Burundian peacekeeping troops. She allegedly responded: “Oh my God! God is great! Wonderful! I swear to God, you told me something to be happy about.”

In another conversation, Yusuf laughingly said she hoped another terrorist strike like the Sept. 11 attack occurs in America: “Oh! It will be happening again. Trust me, more this time it will be double, triple their deaths.”

I guess a good education, a job, free health care, food stamps, two kids and a house weren’t what she was looking for from “welcoming” America.

Huge Utah food stamp fraud bust this week

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Until some enterprising blogger comes along (or a real investigative reporter!) and writes exclusively about immigrant food stamp scams, I guess it’s my job to continue bringing stories like this one to your attention.

Utah is a “welcoming” state, so it’s no surprise that Middle Easterners (and a few others) have moved in to set up convenience stores and involve themselves in redistributing your wealth to their pocketbooks.   See below* where to find information on the refugee resettlement program in Utah and type Salt Lake City into our search function because we have written about that city, and the state, on many occasions.

So here is the politically correct Associated Press food stamp fraud story I first saw in the San Francisco Chronicle (which tells us nothing really!).  I knew this would be a good one so I went searching…

Here then is the story from Ogden, Utah’s home town paper, the Standard-Examiner:

OGDEN — A pair of federal indictments unsealed Tuesday allege a dozen people linked to two Ogden convenience stores participated in an elaborate food stamp scam that netted about $8.6 million in USDA benefits.

The stores named in the indictment handed down by a grand jury in U.S. District Court in Salt Lake City are Westside Valley Market, 873 W. 24th St., and 9th Street Corner Market, 1390 9th St.

Individuals arrested in connection with Westside Valley Market include:

• Zia Atta, 38, of Ogden.

• Aweas Akbar Al-Quadri, 21, of Ogden.

• Naseer Hamad Durani, 39, of Rocklin, Calif.

• Farad Said Farani, 36, of Ogden.

• Mariana Navarro Farani, 29, of Ogden.

• Seraj Ghasem Pour Babakandi, 23, of West Haven.

•  Shershah Lodin, 39, of Pittsburg, Calif.

Those arrested in connection with 9th Street Corner Market include Atta and:

• Masood Aziz, 36, of Elk Grove, Calif.

• Diana Funez, 19, of Ogden.

• Fidel Funez-Limon, 18, of Ogden.

• Sharara Haidari, 30, of Elk Grove, Calif.

• Siavosh Sabri, 41, of Salt Lake City.

The stores are also named as defendants in the indictment.

The defendants face multiple counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud; wire fraud; Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Benefits Program fraud; access device fraud; conspiracy to commit money laundering; and money laundering.

[….]

The defendants from Utah will make their first appearance in federal court today. If convicted, they face prison sentences ranging from five to 20 years on most of the charges and fines of $250,000.

This is the first time I’ve seen a case where the seizure of homes may well follow:

Federal prosecutors are seeking the seizure of homes in Elk Grove, Thornton and Marysville, Calif.; a home and commercial property in Ogden; several bank accounts; and judgments totaling $7.7 million.  [I bet most of the money is already out of the country—ed]

Then I don’t often see ICE involved so some of the perps must not be in the US legally (deport them after doing prison time!).

The investigation involving the stores is being handled by the USDA, the FBI, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement/Homeland Security and the Ogden Police Department.

Update: Fox13 has some photos of those arrested.  Looks like a couple of Hispanics in the mix.

* Utah takes about 1000 refugees a year, most go to Salt Lake City.  My theory is that where there are burgeoning immigrant populations on food stamps, these scammers set up business.   For information on the refugee program in Utah, go here (Refugee Services Office).  Note that it isn’t the Mormon church bringing in the refugees, but Catholic Charities and the secular International Rescue Committee.  You can check out stats for Utah at that site or visit WRAPS (affiliated with the US State Department) for which refugees went to what cities in Utah, here.

Come back soon! I’ve got a new scam story from Buffalo, NY, a city with a declining Jewish and Christian population, and hope to get to it later today!   ****Update**** Here it is!  Finally got around to it—a new scam on a citywide level busted by a police sting operation.

Columbus, OH: Somalis gone wild!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I joked as I left town last week that you would get a break from news about “refugees gone wild,”  but golly I didn’t think they would be making news and going wild the very next day!

Thanks to lots of readers who sent me the story from Columbus, OH (the city probably second only to Minneapolis, MN for the title of Little Mogadishu, USA) about Somalis by the thousands attempting to get subsidized housing available for 200 and getting so out of control that the police had to use mace to break up the melee.

But, you know what is more surprising as I read comments to articles and blog postings (like these at Gateway Pundit) about the case—Americans ( those who don’t read RRW) haven’t the foggiest idea how we came to have hundreds of thousands of Somalis living in the US.

The mainstream media just can’t bring itself to critically examine the Refugee Resettlement Program of the US State Department, so please tell your friends and family to stop in occasionally at RRW.

And then you must—-

Read Sam Solomon and E. AL Maqdisi’s, little book entitled, “Modern Day Trojan Horse—the Islamic Doctrine of Immigration.”   (LOL!  I’m going to nag you every day to read the book I read while internet-deprived over the weekend.)

Here is the Columbus Dispatch.  Note that for most of the story the reader doesn’t know that those being “unruly” were Somalis.  But, here is a news clip of the disturbance’s aftermath that clearly shows who was involved.

Columbus police used pepper spray to control and disperse a larger-than-expected crowd of people who had gathered at a Northeast Side church yesterday to sign up for a subsidized-housing waiting list.

Authorities said the crowd that gathered at Mount Hermon Missionary Baptist Church, 2283 Sunbury Rd., numbered more than 1,000 and consisted mostly of local Somalis.  [2000 according the the housing office.–ed]

They were there because a nearby apartment complex, the Heritage, was holding an event at the church from 8 a.m. until noon to take names for a list for two-bedroom apartments.

Neighbors of the church started calling police about 6:30 a.m. to complain about loud music, blaring car horns and people parking in private driveways, according to police call logs. Some in the crowd started arguing with neighborhood residents, according to subsequent calls to police.

Eventually, someone from Heritage arrived to set up for the event, and police records indicate that the crowd then rushed the doors. That’s when police officers used chemicals to control the crowd. The event was canceled.

Police said an ambulance was brought in to treat those who had been sprayed. No one was arrested, and it appeared that no one was seriously injured.

Get this!  They would have respected Somali “community” leaders, but not the Columbus police?

Hassan Omar, the leader of the Somali Community Association of Ohio*, said many Somalis already live at Heritage. Columbus is home to the second-largest Somali community in the United States, and housing is a real problem for them, Omar said. Families are large, and many crowd into too-small apartments. Anytime word of a vacancy spreads, people want in, he said.

“Everyone wanted to be in the front of the line.”

Omar said his organization didn’t know about the event, but if he had been there, he could have helped.“If we had been there, the people would have respected us,” he said.

It was foolish of us to never have created a whole separate category for Somalis here at RRW because I bet we’ve written at least 400-500 posts on just Somalis.   New readers might want to search RRW for ‘Somalis Columbus,’ and definitely check out one of  our most read posts about the number of Somalis we have admitted to the US over the last three-decades.

And, don’t forget Somalis in Columbus want government stuff from Obama, here.

* Check out the ‘Ethnic Community-based organization (ECBO)’ Somali Community Association of Ohio‘s list of “services” that they want from taxpayers.  And, are you ready for a really good laugh?  Have a look at the most recent Form 990 for Mr. Omar’s organization.  They had an income stream of $217,000 for 2010 and you (taxpayer!) gave the organization $212,000 in government grants!   What a racket!    We pay them to run an organization and they use the organization to  lobby for more taxpayer-funded goodies!

What a bunch of suckers we are (read Solomon’s book!).

Washington is starting to get it: terrorists can get into US through refugee program

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Editors note:   I’m going away for a few days and won’t be able to post, so LOL! you’ll get a little break from the bleak news about refugees gone wild.  If you have a story idea send me an e-mail and put ‘news tip’ in the subject line so I’ll see it as soon as I get back.

Now, here is some encouraging (well, sort of)  news from Judicial Watch in Washington, DC that maybe, just maybe! cases like the Iraqi refugee bomber in Arizona or the Somali jihadist in San Antonio, might actually be breaking through the political correctness shield that surrounds the three-decade old refugee resettlement program of the US State Department.

Here is Judicial Watch reporting on a Congressional hearing this week (emphasis mine)

Islamic terrorists—including two al Qaeda affiliates indicted last year in Kentucky—have entered the United States legally through a resettlement program that helps tens of thousands of “the world’s most vulnerable refugees” start a new life in America each year.

JW then goes into a discussion of how the program works.  For more on the Kentucky Iraqi terrorists which we have discussed ad nauseam here at RRW (no time for links, just type ‘Kentucky Iraqis’ into our search function.)

Now to the Congressional hearing:

In fiscal year 2011 Uncle Sam generously offered 56,424 persecuted foreigners refuge and in fiscal year 2012 the number increased to 58,236, according Barbara Strack, the Refugee Affairs Division Chief at USCIS. This week Strack testified at a congressional hearing, “Terrorist Exploitation of Refugee Programs,” that addressed the serious security vulnerabilities in her division. She told the House Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) “has been working closely with interagency partners to improve, refine, and streamline the security vetting regime for refugee applicants and for other immigration categories.”

Last May two Iraqi nationals who were given refugee status under USRAP were arrested and federally indicted for plotting to send weapons and money to al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) as well as conspiracy to kill U.S. national abroad. The men, Waad Ramadan Alwan and Mohanad Shareef Hammadi, lived in Kentucky and have pleaded guilty to the charges, which are outlined in this FBI document. They are scheduled to be sentenced early next year.

At this week’s hearing, the congressman who chairs the counterterrorism and intelligence committee revealed that the Kentucky case is not a fluke and that the “threat posed by refugees with ties to al Qaeda is much broader than was previously believed.” He reiterated the testimony of FBI Director Robert Mueller before a House Intelligence Committee last year, in which the FBI chief admitted ongoing concerns about individuals who may have been resettled here in the United States that have some association with al Qaeda in Iraq.

USRAP, which has helped relocate millions of refugees over the decades, has come under fire in recent years because it’s gotten too big and security measures are lax. A report released last year by a nonprofit that researches immigration matters says this is because the U.S. has lost control of the program, instead surrendering to U.N. policies to determine who’s admitted and because meaningful background checks are difficult to obtain for refugees admitted from countries without reliable government records.

As a result the program is a bloated disaster, admitting nearly three times the number of refugees as the rest of the developed world combined, the probe found. Additionally, the investigation found that “common criminals, war criminals, international fugitives, and terrorists have all used the USRAP and its related asylum provisions for entry into the United States.” Here is another interesting tidbit: “Bribery of U.N. officials is commonly reported among those attempting to secure refugee admission to the United States.”

Amazingly we have just had two cases in the last week to support the report’s claims.

Be sure to read Rep. Patrick Meehan’s (R-PA) testimony to the committee, here.

Why wasn’t Iraqi criminal deported?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

That is the question that is coming up regarding the Iraqi refugee who bombed the Arizona Social Security Office last week, here.  Why didn’t we deport him the first time he committed a crime?

Over the years, I can’t point to one case (coming to my attention) of a criminal refugee being deported.  That is not to say it hasn’t been done.  The subject has come up frequently relating to Somali criminals, but one person ‘in the know’ who did work in the refugee field tells me it isn’t done—basically that we are squishes about sending refugees back to “dangerous” places.  I guess never mind that the person might be dangerous to us.

You should know that Canada has no fear of deporting criminal Somalis back to Somalia as we reported here in 2010—dropped the gangbanger right in the heart of Mogadishu!

There is a US Supreme Court decision in January 2005, here, in which the Court said a refugee criminal could indeed be deported to Somalia or to another country (gosh, who would want him!).

In the case of the Arizona refugee, Abdullatif Aldosary, if he has been here for years as some news accounts are saying, then he could be a US citizen.  But, LOL!, guess he is one more refugee who didn’t appreciate the good life we gave him.

Don’t you think it’s interesting that for a decade and more (during the Clinton Presidency and after) we were bringing in thousands of Iraqis to escape that evil Saddam Hussein.  Then we get rid of the despot (who was creating the refugees), give them a democratically elected government and we are now bringing in an ever larger number of refugees—does that make sense?

This story reminded me that we have never done a thorough accounting of all the Iraqis we’ve brought to the US (as I did with Somalis here several years ago).  So I started to search for the numbers and see that the Office of Refugee Resettlement no longer has eight years of annual reports available on line, see here (not to mention the fact that they are three years late for the recent ones!)  So pulling the numbers together is going to be a challenge—-will put it on my to-do list!

Here are some recent numbers:

Iraqi refugees resettled in 2008:  13,822

In 2009:  18,838

In 2010:  18,016

In 2011 (slowed due to Kentucky terror arrests):  9,388

Total for just those 4 years:   60,064

Those numbers come from these reports, here and here.  (Annual Flow Reports from DHS).  You might also find this Iraqi fact sheet of interest at USCIS.

Readers!  Are any of you interested in writing a book on Iraqi refugees—we’ve done your research for you!  This is the 548th post in our Iraqi Refugee category!