Sessions, Cruz Blast Admin. for Not Revealing Immigration Histories of Terrorists in U.S.

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) are slamming the Obama administration for failing to provide detailed immigration histories for 72 terrorists identified last year.

“More than three months [after we sent our letter] the Administration has not provided immigration details on a single one of the 72 [terrorists identified in our letter],” the pair said in a joint statement.

On August 12, Sessions, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest, and Cruz Chairman of the Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Oversight, Agency Action, Federal Rights and Federal Courts, dispatched a letter to Attorney General Loretta Lynch, Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson, and Secretary of State John Kerry requesting specific information about the 72 identified individuals connected to terrorism by September 4.

“According to publicly available information, a disproportionately large number of these individuals are foreign-born immigrants admitted to the United States – and in many cases, are immigrants who naturalized after admission. An additional number are the children of foreign migrants,” they said.

While the letter asked for “basic immigration and family immigration information” about each individual identified, Sessions and Cruz — a Republican candidate for the president — charge the administration has not provided a single detail about any of them.

“It is quite telling that this Administration – which seems to have unlimited resources to circumvent our immigration laws and further its executive amnesties – cannot find the time or resources to provide timely answers to these simple questions,” they said.

Sessions and Cruz highlighted the failure to respond to their letter in the context of last week’s terrorist attacks in Paris and the Obama administration’s continuation of plans to resettle tens of thousands of refugees from “from unstable areas of the world.” That, they said, “reveals a flagrant disregard for the safety and security of the American people.”

“In just the last year, refugees and other migrants admitted to the U.S. from Bosnia, Somalia, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Ghana, Kuwait and Bangladesh have been implicated in terrorist activity,” going on to call on the administration to answer their and discontinue “its dangerous resettlement policies.”