Tuesday, May 16, 2017

Comey: We know of at least 300 terrorists who came into the U.S. as refugees

What could go wrong?

Comey: We know of at least 300 terrorists who came into the U.S. as refugees


Not that you’ll hear much attention paid to this, since it didn’t involve Hillary being exonerated, Mike Flynn being a monster or Trump being Putin’s . . . ah, go and get a word from Stephen Colbert if you really want one.
But there are more pressing matters for the FBI to concern itself with, one of which is terrorists who come into this country and how they’re getting in. An absolute article of faith among leftists is that refugees pose absolutely no threat of terrorism. None. It doens’t matter if they come from the world’s terrorist hot beds. It doesn’t matter what’s happening in Germany and France. Refugees are salt-of-the-earth people who just want a better life, and we should give it to them without asking any questions. And just as Hillary insisted “Islam has nothing to do with terrorism,” so we must also agree with the assertion that refugees have nothing to do with terrorism.
Of course, the left likes to demand data when it suits their purposes. Is there any data on this question? And if so, does it support the left’s assertion?
Why yes. And . . . decidedly not:
SEN. THOM TILLIS, R-N.C.: Director Comey, thank you for being here. I’m always impressed with your composure and your preparation. And I want to get to a couple of other things, maybe first and then if I have time come back to what the hearing has been predominantly about. When you briefed us last year, I think that you said that there were some—that there were ongoing investigations on homeland—on Homeland Security potential terrorist, either home grown or foreign inspired investigations in every state. Is that still the case?
COMEY: Yes.
TILLIS: Do you have roughly an—can you give me roughly an idea of the number of investigations that is?
COMEY: Yes it’s just north of 1,000.
TILLIS: Just north of 1,000.
COMEY: Yes. That case load has stayed about the same since we last talked about it. Some have closed, some have opened. But about 1,000 home grown violent extremist investigations in the United States.
TILLIS: And do—at the time I also asked the question about—to what extent that you can discuss in this setting—were people where the target of those investigations—persons who came in through various programs where questions about vetting have been raised as to whether or not they’re accurate. At the time there were a dozen a half I think that you may have estimated. Do you have any rough numbers about that?
COMEY: Yes I do. If—we have about 1,000 home grown violent extremist investigations and we probably have another 1,000 or so that are—I should define my terms. Home grown violent extremists, we mean somebody—we have no indication that they’re intouch with any terrorists.
TILLIS: Any foreign touch. Right.
COMEY: Yes. Then we have another big group of people that we’re looking at who we see some contact with foreign terrorists. So you take that 2,000 plus cases, about 300 of them are people who came to the United States as refugees.
Keep in mind that this is just cases the FBI knows about. It’s impossible to say how many refugees are involved with terror cells but have thus far remained undetected by law enforcement.
But let’s say for the sake of discussion that these 300 are the only ones who entered the country under the pretense of being mere refugees, but in fact are involved with the planning and eventually the execution of terrorist activity. How much damage can 300 terrorists do? (Does anyone remember how many terrorists were needed to pull off the 9/11 attacks? That number would be 18.)
Continued below...

The reason President Trump has been trying to implement a temporary travel ban from six terrorism-heavy nations is to give the U.S. time to improve vetting procedures so we can prevent this very sort of thing from happening. It’s entirely possible that some or even most of these 300 people will never engage in a terrorist act. But once you let them into the country, you’ve already taxed law enforcement resources just by forcing them to keep an eye on these people. That alone puts the U.S. at a disadvantage in its overall challenge of countering and preventing terrorism.
Why does it make sense to have an immigration policy that errs on the side of letting people in, even when we know they come from countries that are breeding terrorism, rather than erring on the side of caution and making sure we can minimize as much as possible the potential threat people pose?
When Barack Obama was president, he presented the matter as if it was a simple choice between having compassion for suffering people and being cold-hearted monsters. The suggestion that vetting for terrorists should play any part at all in the policy was treated as delusional nonsense.
How nonsensical does that look now, given the information Comey gave in his testimony yesterday? Oh, and why has almost no major media treated this revelation as major news? It seems to me that if we’ve let 300 terrorists into the country under the guise of helping refugees, the country might want to know about that, and might want to know what’s being done about it. But in order to treat this as serious news, the media would have to acknowledge that Donald Trump was right about something, and that their own embrace of left-wing talking points on this question was wrong.
Given the choice between informing the public and protecting their own interests (as well as those of their Democrat heroes), the media will do the latter every time.

Dan Calabrese -- Bio and Archives | Click to view 3 CommentsDan Calabrese’s column is distributed by CainTV, which can be found at caintv.com
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