Homeland Security Chair: ‘We Don’t Have’ ‘Sufficient’ Intelligence to Vet Syrian Refugees

House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R-TX) stated, “we don’t have human intelligence on the ground properly in Syria, to have the database that’s sufficient to vet these individuals to know that they’re not threats” regarding the Syrian refugees on Thursday’s “America’s Newsroom” on the Fox News Channel.

McCaul said, “I just got out of a briefing with homeland security officials, FBI, counterterrorism, and the concern, Martha, is that we don’t have human intelligence on the ground properly in Syria, to have the database that’s sufficient to vet these individuals to know that they’re not threats. I was in Jordan, at one of these refugee camps, a million of them. And they told me — the Jordanians, that they don’t know who these people are as well. And so until we can properly vet them through the right databases, it would be highly irresponsible to start bringing them in, when they could be potential terrorists, and provide a sort of a jihadist pipeline into the United States. We did this in Iraq when we had very good intelligence, and we brought in several that had already killed Americans.”

McCaul also wondered, “Why aren’t the Gulf states taking these people?” And stated that he would be “putting a lot of pressure on the Gulf states to absorb this refugee crisis” and that they are “better equipped” to handle the crisis than the US.

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