The federal government’s improper award of citizenship to 858 migrants from dangerous countries creates new terrorism threats, says David Ward, a former Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official and Border Patrol agent.
“We are opening ourselves up to a lot of trouble,” Ward told Fox and Friends Tuesday morning. “Just this past week, we had two terrorist attacks in the country, and both of them were naturalized citizens from special-interest countries.”
“This is absolute incompetence by the Department of Homeland Security,” Ward said. “This has happened before in 1996, with the Clinton administration doing the same thing. They ramrodded naturalization through to knock down their [bureaucratic] backlog. A lot of people had criminal records, but they weren’t married up with the case files of these individuals. They were ultimately granted citizenship, yet they were criminals.”
A DHS Inspector General report found that hundreds of aliens were granted citizenship instead of being deported, because their digital fingerprint records “were not available.”
The scandal comes after President Obama established a “White House Task Force on New Americans,” after illegally shielding millions of illegal aliens from deportation, and is making a determined push to convert the foreign-born migrants in the U.S. into voting citizens amid record levels of immigration.
“But now we have 858 special interest country aliens who were ordered deported because of criminal activity, now are among us as citizens. They have access to everything in the United States except the office of the presidency,” said Ward.
“It does smell fishy. Here we have these people that have been ordered deported, that are among us — they can be elected to Congress, they can be elected to the Senate, they can be anything, and we have no idea about who they are,” Ward said.
“And the problem with all this is the vetting process,” he continued. “If we can’t vet… aliens in the United States that are already under proceedings and have been ordered deported, and here we have the [Obama] administration wanting to bring in all these people from the same, special-interest countries, without being properly vetted, we are opening ourselves up to a lot of trouble. And just this past week, we had two terrorist attacks in the country, and both of them were naturalized citizens from special-interest countries.”
Host Ainsley Earhardt referred to the DHS inspector general report, noting one naturalized alien set for deportation became a law enforcement official, another gained access to secure maritime facilities, and two more were able to access secure areas at commercial airports. “How worried should we be?” she asked.
“We should be very worried that they have access to our deepest secure areas, including the airports,” Ward said. “They could be TSA agents who flag other SIC [special-interest countries] aliens in through the airport. So there are a lot of variables in this. And this also sets us up for their asymmetric war against this country, by using covert operations just like this.”
Ward agreed with host Steve Doocy that the U.S. immigration system is broken, saying separate agencies no longer share critical information on aliens residing in the country.
“It is broken. Ever since 2003, when the INS was dissolved and incorporated into this thing called the Department of Homeland Security, all of the avenues of information exchange were stopped,” Ward said. Several agencies were “under the same umbrella and worked together in unison to address the immigration problem. Now, these agencies do not talk to each other. They are completely fragmented.”
The 858 aliens granted citizenship while under deportation orders can be prosecuted in federal court, Ward, added, saying they would lose their citizenship and be removed from the U.S.
“And I would hope the next president would follow through, because this administration will not do it. We’ve already seen a lot of criminal activity that the government has just pushed aside, but the next president needs to get a handle on this and start addressing the problems we have,” he said.
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