More than two dozen Iraqi Chaldean Christians
forced from their homes by ISIS have been detained at an ICE detention center
in California for six months after crossing the border from Mexico.
The San Diego Union reported July 31 that 20 of the 27 Chaldeans at the Otay Detention Center
in Otay Mesa, California, have American family members living in Southern
California who are willing to sponsor them.
Family members have been holding weekly vigils
and rallies to draw attention to the detentions. Large U.S. Chaldean Catholic
communities reside in San Diego and Detroit.
The family members say they’ve been given few
details on why they’ve been detained for so long, despite being refugees from
Middle East terror.
“These aren’t people who just decided to cross
the U.S.-Mexico border. These are people saying, ‘we have nowhere else to go,’”
Mark Arabo, a spokesman for the Chaldean community, told the San Diego Union.
“It seems like the border is open to everyone
unless you’re an Iraq Christian fleeing ISIS,” Arabo told Bill O’Reilly of Fox
News Monday. “Obama is to blame, Congress is to blame, and the U.S. State
Department is to blame.”
The Chaldean Christians are being held “without
any logic or explanation; they’ve escaped ISIS only to be imprisoned by ICE.
These are 20 innocent Christians who escaped a holocaust only to be imprisoned
by ICE,” Arabo said. “These are people we should be celebrating not
imprisoning.”
Lauren Mack, spokeswoman for Immigration and
Customs Enforcement, confirmed that 27 Iraqi nationals are in custody but she
told the Union she couldn’t comment on individual immigration cases.
The extended detention of the Iraqi Christians
represents a stark contrast from the way the wave of Central American women and
children were treated when they massed at the border last summer. The
overwhelming majority were detained for a matter of days or weeks, then
released and given a hearing date to appear in immigration court.
Former Republican Congressman Frank Wolf of
Virginia, who now serves as a distinguished senior fellow at the 21st Century
Wilberforce Initiative, which advocates for persecuted Christians worldwide,
said the situation is a sad commentary on the state of U.S. priorities when it
comes to asylum seekers.
“One can understand why they would leave their
country when they are facing genocide,” Wolf told WND. “I have seen the area
they came from (in Iraq).”
It’s not a surprise that Christians being hunted
down by ISIS would seek to leave and find refuge in a country like the U.S.
where they have family ties and cultural ties, he said.
‘Inherent bias against
Christians’
“The very nature that fact that the border is so
porous is an indictment of this administration. People have been talking about
it for years,” Wolf said. “But for Chaldean Christians, for them to have to go
back to Iraq, wow, when for other border crossers the norm is they process
them, give them a court date and release them.”
Wolf said there seems to be an “inherent bias”
against Christians in the current administration.
He said it’s clearly easier to get asylum in the
U.S. as a Muslim than it is for a Christian and it’s been that way for a number
of years.
“I don’t know why, but if you look the latest
numbers that have come out it’s pretty clear,” Wolf said. “Remember when the 21
Coptic Christians were beheaded they were referred to as Egyptian migrant
workers, not Christians. And when the 148 Kenyan Christians were executed
by al-Shabaab they were not called Christians, so you clearly have an inherent
bias in the State Department. I think it’s more in this administration than
I’ve ever seen it but I think even in previous administrations that bias has
existed within the State Department.”
Joop Koopman, communications manager for Aid to
the Church in Need USA, a Catholic relief organization, said the treatment of
the Chaldeans seems out of step with current U.S. immigration policy, unless
there is more to the story that is not known.
“Leaving aside the specifics of the immigration
laws and the border crossing it does seem to call to mind the administration’s
reluctance to talk specifically about Christian persecution by Muslim
extremists, under which, at least in theory, these people would deserve
asylum,” Koopman said. “But there may be other reasons we don’t know.”
Koopman said these types of asylum cases will
only increase as ISIS and other militant Islamists make the final push to
eradicate Christianity from its birthplace in the Middle East.
“It is clear there will be more and more of
these kinds of cases coming, as Chaldean Christians are forced out of their
country, they will have no alternative but for mass immigration,” he said. “So
what will we do? Will the U.S. and other countries make room for them? The big
question is, will persecution by ISIS qualify as grounds for asylum?”
Only Muslims need
apply?
Pamela Geller, an activist, blogger and author,
said the Obama administration has demonstrated an “unstated preference” for
Muslim immigrants over Christians.
“This goes hand-in-hand with his almost
complete silence about the Muslim persecution of Christians worldwide, and his
consistent failure when he does address it to identify the perpetrators,”
Geller told WND. “We have seen this throughout his presidency: a relentless
tendency to favor Muslims and paint a rosy, fictional view of Islam, while
being harsh toward Christianity. It is all part of his post-American agenda, as
I explained in my 2010 book, ‘The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War
On America.‘”
‘Horrific conditions’
for Christians in Iraq
Wolf said he visited Iraq in January and was
struck by the horrific conditions under which Christians are forced to live.
“In January we spent five days there and the
conditions are brutal.”
Just last week, on July
30, Wolf sent a letter to president Obama and United Nations Secretary General Ban
Ki-moon asking that they declare what is taking place in Iraq and Syria to be
an official genocide.
A cover story in Sunday’s New York Times
Magazine, for instance, describes the abduction of a 3-year-old girl from her
mother, and the separation of captives into “healthy” and “infirm” groups, a
gesture chillingly reminiscent of the Holocaust. Often, there is a third group,
comprised of women, soon to be sold as sex slaves, according to Wolf’s report.
There are also reports of children born to these
captured women, Wolf wrote in the letter, who are raised “to conform to the
insurgency’s interpretation of ‘pure’ Islam.”
“ISIS has kidnapped and forcibly transferred the
children of Christians and Yazidis, including children as young as seven
months,” Wolf added. “Reports indicate that these children are being
intimidated and brainwashed in order to create the next generation of radical
insurgents.” For this reason, “it is imperative that the issue be brought
immediately before the Security Council and that a declaration of genocide be
made.”
What is going on there meets the test of U.N.
Article 2 of what constitutes a genocide, Wolf said.
A growing ‘sense of
abandonment’ by Western Christians
Wolf described the Iraqi Christian community,
1.5 million strong when the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, as “on the edge of
extinction.”
“We went to Erbil, and to the front lines where
the Peshmerga (Kurds) are fighting ISIS using very old weapons, and then to the
refugee camps, we went through the whole area, to the Nineveh plain, where
Christian militia have formed, like a national guard, to defend their
villages,” Wolf said. “But the Christians and the Yazidis are all facing
genocide and their stories are so frightening. We interviewed two 17 to
18-year-old girls who were kidnapped by ISIS and escaped. They feel a
tremendous sense of abandonment by the West, particularly those who are
Christians.”
One man told the story of his wife, who was in
the hospital with breast cancer when ISIS came in and took over.
“And ISIS went to the hospital and told them
they would only treat his wife if they converted to Islam,” Wolf said. “The
wife refused to convert, the husband also, and she died without treatment, and
they feel why isn’t the church in the West, why isn’t someone advocating for
them?
“So the conditions there are horrible, and there
will be no way you can send these Chaldeans back,” without them being killed.
Iraq’s 1.5 million Christians have now dwindled
to about 250,000.
“Roughly 17 Iraqi Christian families leave every
day,” Wolf said. “Some went to Syria and now they’re been pushed out of Syria.”
Wolf said he would not be surprised, “if within
a year you see the black flag of ISIS flying over Damascus.”
“The noose is tightening around Assad,” he said.
“We’re not even aiding the Kurds who are fighting ISIS.”
More biblical activity occurred in Iraq than in
Jerusalem, Wolf said.
“Abraham, Rebekah and Daniel were all buried in
Iraq, Ezekiel was buried in Iraq, Nahum’s tomb is there, and of course Jonah’s
tomb was blown up a few months ago by ISIS, so the cradle of Christianity is
ready to be emptied of Christians.”
Comments
Where is Pope Francis on
this attrocity ? Why are our churches
assisting to resettle Muslim refugees ?
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA
Tea Party Leader
1 comment:
Linked, plussed, and tweeted...it's August but *some*body with the authority to investigate this may be online.
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