Portman questions administration official on refugee resettlement vetting process

On Thursday, U.S. Senator Rob Portman (R-Ohio) questioned Administration officials regarding what steps are being taken to ensure terrorists do not exploit the U.S. Syrian refugee resettlement program.

In a Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing entitled “The Impact of ISIS on the Homeland and Refugee Resettlement,” Portman called for a thorough review of Department of Homeland Security and State Department vetting procedures to ensure that no terrorists or individuals with links to Islamist extremist groups make it into the United States.

Excerpts of Portman’s remarks are below.
  
“I think it’s clear that we live in a dangerous world and it’s something we have to be concerned about, not just on the refugee program, but all of these various entry points. One of course is the visa waiver program. We talked about the fact that there were 5,000 foreign fighters who come from these 38 countries with which we have a visa waiver arrangement. That’s a huge risk and I think it’s appropriate that this committee focus on tightening up those standards.
 
“We also of course have to worry about visas. The 9/11 terrorists came here and overstayed their visas, we didn’t know who they were, where they were. That’s an immigration reform issue.

“We have foreign fighters ourselves. We have some that have come back to my home state of Ohio. One came back to Columbus, Ohio and plotted to commit terrorist acts in the United States and was arrested for it. It’s happening.

“This is a problem, and it goes to our need to have a secure border. Not just for immigration purposes, but for money, guns, drugs and certainly for terrorism.

“This is a very real issue. I don’t think we should ignore the refugee side of it either, but let me tell you a story. There were a couple brothers who were brought in as refugees from Iraq. Not Syria, but Iraq. They were in the heartland, right across the river from where I live in Bowling Green, Kentucky and recently the 6th circuit court of appeals affirmed their conviction for terrorist activities including providing assistance to al Qaeda in Iraq. They were also taped saying they want to build a bomb in the United States to kill a U.S. Army Captain in the United States. They were quoted saying ‘many things should take place, and it should be huge.’ These were refugees.

“Of course we need to know who is coming in. We need to be sure we not only know who they are, but also what their intentions are. And with regards to these Iraqi refugees who came in, they had been finger printed at the border in Syria because they had to go through Syria to come from Iraq. They had been entered into a biometric database maintained by U.S. intelligence. Yet when they applied for refugee status and were checked by DHS, your department, the FBI, Department of Defense, they came in clean and were admitted to the United States.

“So later they bragged about what they had done to attack and kill U.S. soldiers in Iraq. They weren’t picked up. My concern, which was something that came forward in our last hearing on October 8th in this room, where again we had your boss the FBI Director and Counter-terrorism officials – they told us point blank, ‘we do not have the intelligence in Syria to be able to do the appropriate background checks.’
 
“Here’s the quote from Director Comey, FBI Director, in response to asking about our gaps in intelligence collection and sharing process that pose great risk he said: ‘Senator, to me, there is a risk associated with bringing anybody in from the outside, but especially from a conflict zone like that. My concern there is that there are certain gaps I do not want to talk about publicly in the data that is available to us.’

“Obviously, we don’t have intelligence on the ground there. We just sent 50 Special Forces there, that’s great. They’re not there to collect data on refugees. So I do think it’s a concern, I do think we need to tighten up.

“For us to stand here and say we’re somehow against refugees because we think there ought to be proper checks in place – that’s ridiculous. We are the most generous country in the world, and thank God we are. And I along with my colleagues, I think on both sides of the aisle, are strongly in support of the refugee resettlement program, but let’s be darn sure that we don’t have another situation as we had in Bowling Green, Kentucky in a case where unfortunately because we don’t have intelligence on the ground, we had even less information than we did with regard to the Iraqis.”