Month: June 2024

Alert US Military Thwarts Would-Be Terrorists

By Joe Guzzardi

In a high stakes gamble with Americans’ safety and security at risk, President Joe Biden is rolling the dice again. Capitol Hill insiders confirm that the administration is considering providing refugee status to Palestinians from the Gaza Strip via mass parole, an immigration authority the president has abused since he entered the White House. The Immigration and Nationality Act requires that parole status be granted only on a temporary, case-by-case basis to satisfy a compelling, urgent humanitarian need. In blatant violation of the INA, Biden has doled out parole en bloc to millions of illegal immigrants.

The Biden administration has amassed a long list of illegal, unconstitutional immigration crimes that endanger the public. Top among them is his red-carpet welcome to an unknown total of millions—perhaps ten million or more—of unvetted illegal aliens whose backgrounds and intentions are unknown. Municipalities have struggled to provide shelter, health care, education and other affirmative benefits to illegally present foreign nationals. So far, Biden has luckily avoided a terrorist attack, but his good fortune is running out. During FY 2023, 736 known or suspected terrorists were apprehended at either the northern or southern border. The gotaways, an estimated 1.6 million over a three year period, doubtlessly include dozens more terrorists.

The nation now knows that at least one likely active terrorist, a Jordanian national who crossed the California/Mexico border illegally in May, recently breached Virginia’s Marine Corp Base Quantico in a box truck. Accompanied by another Jordanian national whose F-1 student visa expired in May, another immigration crime that converts his temporary visa status to illegal immigrant, the pair claimed that they were Amazon subcontractors making a delivery. Amazon had no knowledge of the Jordanians as employees or subcontractors. DHS refuses to release the Jordanians names; the FBI and ICE are mum. But Dave Katz, a former DEA agent and federal firearms instructor at Quantico, warned that the box truck incident was likely “a dry run for driving a box truck that was not going to be empty the second time.” Katz called the failed attempt the Jordanians “equivalent of a feasibility study.”

The Jordanians are not DHS’s only national security concern. In North Carolina, two non-English speaking, illegal alien Chechen men were caught trespassing past sunset outside a U.S. Army Special Operations Command officer’s home. The men had cell phones with Russian language contacts.  One, Ramzan Daraev, claimed to work as a subcontractor for Utilities One, but had neither electrical equipment nor identification. Utilities One is a foreign-registered New Jersey-based company founded in 2016 by a young Moldovan CEO three years after he moved to the U.S.

When confronted near a power line in a wooded part of the property, an altercation ensued, and the Army officer shot and killed Daraev. Authorities questioned the second Chechen, Dzhankutov Adsalan and, despite being illegally present in the U.S., released him. The violated Special Op’s family told news outlets that the Chechens were photographing their children. To call the Quantico and North Carolina incidents suspicious, threatening and a threat to national security is an understatement.

Despite the frightening Jordanian and Moldovan incidents as well as the 30,000 unvetted Chinese who have surged the border but that no White House official cares about, Biden seems determined to invite more trouble. Accepting Gazan refugees would heighten national security risks to levels not seen since before 9/11. Before taking the drastic step that would admit Gazans as refugees, give them work permits, and put them on a path to citizenship, Biden and the State Department should familiarize themselves with an analysis The Washington Institute for Near East Policy published, “Teaching Terror, How Hamas Radicalizes Palestine.” The institute concluded that Hamas successfully radicalizes Palestinians not only to support and fund but to facilitate and participate in the group’s terrorist attacks. More than 25 years ago in 1997, the State Department designated Hamas as a terrorist organization. And even though Hamas is an organization that calls itself a local resistance group, it unsurprisingly targets foreign audiences from America to Malaysia with its web-based terrorist messages. Hamas raises the vast majority of its $2 billion annual budget abroad, including generous funding from Iran, United Nations agencies and so-called charitable groups.

Two-term Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), who served in the Iraq War and spent 23 years in the Army Reserve and the Army National Guard, wrote a pointed letter to Biden which 34 Republican Senators co-signed that demanded a full accounting of his Gazan refugee vision. Biden, to quote Ernst, “is blowing off my work to prevent an Oct. 7-related attack on our own shores.” The White House referred Ernst’s letter to the Department of Homeland Security which further blew her off with the false promise that “Any individuals from Gaza who have traveled or would travel to the U.S. are thoroughly vetted, as the safety and security of the American people is our top priority.” The reality is that the administration has no intention to track, much less remove dangerous actors posing as refugees. A new Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General report revealed how it has already failed to track the 77,000 Afghan refugees admitted into the country. The consequences of the Afghan withdrawal blunder remain to be seen.

Biden has hands full enough without tempting fate further with Gazan refugees. The White House’s first obligation is to rescue American citizens, not Gazans.

Joe Guzzardi is an Institute for Sound Public Policy analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at jguzzardi@ifspp.org

Alert US Military Thwarts Would-Be Terrorists Alert US Military Thwarts Would-Be Terrorists