Judicial Watch and a small band of patriots in Washington have been highlighting the existential threat to our nation caused by the lack of border security and the Obama administration’s lawless approach to immigration. We have also exposed the dangerous pro-Islamist approach to counter-terrorism by the Obama administration that, for instance, saw Obama administration officials working with Islamists and terrorist fronts in putting forth the lie that an Internet video, rather than Islamic terrorists, were responsible for the attack on our facilities in Benghazi.
After the recent terror attacks in France, likely assisted by at least one ISIS terrorist who posed as a Syrian refugee, it would be reasonable to think that good sense might prevail on the Islamist terrorist threat. Unfortunately for the safety of America, the Obama administration doubled down on its dangerous and dishonest radicalism.
As the bodies of Islamic terrorist victims were still being identified in Paris, and as France went into a state of war in response to the carnage, the Obama administration’s first substantive move on Islamic terrorism was to use the focus on the Paris attacks to release five al Qaeda terrorists from our secure military facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Obama, on a crusade to close Gitmo, is releasing terrorists from the facility on a regular basis, and is reportedly planning to try to move the terrorists into the United States despite a law absolutely prohibiting him from doing so. With Obama, amnesty isn’t limited to illegal aliens – it includes the kinds of terrorists who murdered dozens in Paris and, just today, in Mali.
The release of terrorists isn’t enough for this administration; it imports terrorists, as well. Or, in the case of alleged refugees from what we are supposed to believe is Syria, Barack Obama would admit thousands from the center of the terrorist storm in the Middle East without any serious security background checks. Rather than listen to the American people, who oppose the refugee proposal in large and bipartisan numbers, Obama’s plan to spend your tax money to bring 10,000 refugees from Syria to the United States is moving full speed ahead.
Judicial Watch has long been monitoring this issue and reported over a month ago on how our national security officials confess they can’t vet these refugees for terrorist ties:
During a recent congressional hearing a director with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), which operates under the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), confirmed that the U.S. has no method of vetting the new refugees because the Syrian government doesn’t have an intelligence database to run checks against. It’s actually embarrassing to watch the footage of the DHS director, Matthew Emrich, getting grilled by the senator who chairs the committee that conducted the hearing a few days ago. The session was held to address the fiscal and security implications of the Obama administration’s refugee resettlement program.
Under questioning from Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions, Emrich admits that there is no reliable way to assure that individuals coming from Syria are properly checked. The exchange lasts about seven minutes and Emrich sounds desperate when he says “we check everything that we are aware of” and that “we are in the process of overturning every stone.” The bottom line is that there is no way to verify the identity of Syrians so the defeated Homeland Security official proceeds to say that “in many countries of the world from which we have traditionally accepted refugees over the years the United States government did not have extensive data holdings.”
Obama’s own FBI Director reconfirmed that there is no reliable way to “certify” these refugees will not pose a threat to national security.
Obama’s reaction to efforts to either slow down or, most appropriately, stop this refugee madness has been venomous. As is typical in Washington, the extremist Obama opposes modest (and likely ineffective efforts) to slow his refugee program down. Republicans (and many Democrats) are now defending a bill that, some suggest, would do little to stop Obama from pursuing his plans to increase the flow of refugees from Syria here by a factor of 20 times! I suppose a fake debate over a piece of legislation that would do nothing to address a serious problem is better than what typically goes on in Washington, D.C., as at least border security and the terrorist threat are under debate here.
Once again, Judicial Watch is in the middle of this debate – exposing the facts, exploding the corrupt lies, and educating Americans about this core national security issue.
We helped get the ball rolling on the refugee issue on Fox News this past Sunday. At the end of that interview, I suggested citizens ask their local leaders whether they were going to allow Syrian refugees to settle in their towns. We predicted that would be the issue over the next few weeks. Well, the American people needed no prodding as governors from across the nation immediately revolted and said their states would not allow Obama to settle refugees from Syria, for now, in their states (to see if your state is on the list of objectors, click here for a map.)
In addition, as the refugee debated heated up in Congress this week, it was Judicial Watch’s Pulitzer Prize-deserving reporting on the border terror threat that helped drive the argument for the pausing of the refugee program. Key House members pushing for tough border security cited our work, noting our April 2015report that “ISIS was operating training bases in close proximity of the U.S. Southern border.” Last year, our Corruption Chronicles first broke the news of Islamic terrorists on the border, including the fact they have already entered the United States through the Mexican border. Moreover, Homeland Security sources have told JW that four terrorists were apprehended by federal authorities and the Texas Department of Public Safety in McAllen and Pharr. We alerted Americans that ISIS is operating in a Mexican border town just eight miles from El Paso, Texas.
Let me close with a point that you won’t hear anywhere else but may well know as a Judicial Watch supporter: the Benghazi scandal and the ISIS disaster are connected.
We proved this beyond all doubt in documents we forced out of the Obama gang thanks a court order issued in a May 15, 2014, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit we filed against the Defense and State Departments. The headlines from our May press release tell it best:
Administration knew three months before the November 2012 presidential election of ISIS plans to establish a caliphate in Iraq
Administration knew of arms being shipped from Benghazi to Syria
That material provided the first official confirmation that the U.S. government was aware of arms shipments from Benghazi to Syria. The documents also included an incredibly important August 2012 analysis, warning of the rise of ISIS and the predicted failure of the Obama policy of regime change in Syria. The August 2012 document, from the Defense Intelligence Agency, deserves careful review by anyone interested in the ISIS threat and how it could have been prevented. As our release noted:
[T]he opposition in Syria was driven by al Qaeda and other extremist Muslim groups: “the Salafist, the Muslim Brotherhood, and AQI are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria.” The growing sectarian direction of the war was predicted to have dire consequences for Iraq, which included the “grave danger” of the rise of ISIS:
The deterioration of the situation has dire consequences on the Iraqi situation and are as follows:
This creates the ideal atmosphere for AQI [al Qaeda Iraq] to return to its old pockets in Mosul and Ramadi, and will provide a renewed momentum under the presumption of unifying the jihad among Sunni Iraq and Syria, and the rest of the Sunnis in the Arab world against what it considers one enemy, the dissenters. ISI could also declare an Islamic state through its union with other terrorist organizations in Iraq and Syria, which will create grave danger in regards to unifying Iraq and the protection of its territory.
Some of the “dire consequences” are blacked out but the DIA presciently warned one such consequence would be the “renewing facilitation of terrorist elements from all over the Arab world entering into Iraqi Arena.”
This DIA report is getting new attention these days, most recently in The New York Times this week. No wonder Obama gets so crazy when pushed on the Syria disaster, as this documents his alliance with jihadists in Libya led not only to the killing of four Americans in Benghazi but helped spark the ISIS war that threatens to ensnare the West in another world wide war.
Our litigation, our reporting, our investigation, and our educational efforts on these national security and related immigration/border issues won’t slow down. Judicial Watch takes the Islamist terrorist threat seriously, especially when the politicians of both parties move on to other, petty topics.