Anatomy of the terror threat: Files show
hundreds of US plots, refugee connection, by Judson Berger 6/22/16
Newly
obtained congressional data shows hundreds of terror plots have been stopped in
the U.S. since 9/11 – mostly involving foreign-born suspects, including dozens
of refugees.
The
files are sure to inflame the debate over the Obama administration’s push to
admit thousands more refugees from Syria and elsewhere, a proposal Donald Trump
has vehemently opposed on the 2016 campaign trail.
“These
data make clear that the United States not only lacks the ability to properly
screen individuals prior to their arrival, but also that our nation has an
unprecedented assimilation problem,” Sens. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., and Ted Cruz,
R-Texas, told President Obama in a June 14 letter, obtained by FoxNews.com. The
files also give fresh insight into the true scope of the terror threat and
cover a wide range of cases, including:
- A Seattle man plotting to attack a
U.S. military facility
- An Atlantic City man using his
“Revolution Muslim” site to encourage confrontations with U.S. Jewish
leaders “at their homes”
- An Iraq refugee arrested in
January, accused of traveling to Syria to “take up arms” with terror
groups
While
the June 12 massacre at an Orlando gay nightclub marked the deadliest terror
attack on U.S. soil since 2001, the data shows America has been facing a steady
stream of plots. For the period September 2001 through 2014, data shows the
U.S. successfully prosecuted 580 individuals for terrorism and terror-related
cases. Further, since early 2014, at least 131 individuals were identified as
being implicated in terror.
Across
both those groups, the senators reported that at least 40 people initially
admitted to the U.S. as refugees later were convicted or implicated in terror
cases.
Among
the 580 convicted, they said, at least 380 were foreign-born. The top countries
of origin were Pakistan, Lebanon and Somalia, as well as the Palestinian
territories.
Both
Sessions and Cruz sit on the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration and
the National Interest, which compiled the terror-case information based on data
from the Justice Department, news reports and other open-source information.
The files were shared with FoxNews.com.
The
files include dates, states of residence, countries of origin for foreign-born
suspects, and reams of other details.
Specifically,
they show a sharp spike in cases in 2015, largely stemming from the arrest of
suspects claiming allegiance to the Islamic State. They also show a heavy
concentration of cases involving suspects from California, Texas, New York and
Minnesota, among other states.
EXPLORE THE DATA IN THE MAPS AND CHARTS BELOW
The
senators say the terror-case repository still is missing critical details on
suspects’ immigration history, which they say the Department of Homeland
Security has “failed to provide.” Immigration data the senators compiled came
from other sources.
Sessions
and Cruz asked the president in their letter to order the departments of Justice,
Homeland Security and State to "update" and provide more detailed
information. The senators have sent several letters to those departments since
last year requesting immigration histories of those tied to terror.
“The
administration refuses to give out the information necessary to establish a
sound policy that protects Americans from terrorists,” Sessions said in a
statement to Fox News.
Asked
about the complaints, DHS spokeswoman Gillian M. Christensen told FoxNews.com
the department “will respond to the senators’ request directly and not through
the press.”
“More
than 100 Congressional committees, subcommittees, caucuses, commissions and
groups exercise oversight and ensure accountability of DHS and we work closely
with them on a daily basis. We’ve received unprecedented requests from a number
of senators and representatives for physical paper files for more than 700
aliens,” she said, adding that officials have to review each page manually for
privacy and other issues.
Cruz
ran unsuccessfully this year for the Republican presidential nomination.
Sessions, an ardent critic of the administration’s immigration policies, is
supporting presumptive GOP nominee Trump.
The
allegations detailed in the subcommittee’s research pertain to a range of
cases, involving suspects caught traveling or trying to travel overseas to
fight, as well as suspects ensnared in controversial sting operations which
civil-liberties groups including the ACLU have criticized.
In
a 2014 report, Human Rights Watch said nearly half of the
federal counterterror convictions at the time came from “informant-based
cases,” many of them sting operations where the informants played a role in the
plot.
The
report said: “In some cases the Federal Bureau of Investigation may have
created terrorists out of law-abiding individuals by conducting sting
operations that facilitated or invented the target’s willingness to act.”
But
even in some of those cases, federal agents got involved after learning of a
serious suspected plot. In the case of the Seattle suspect, Abu Khalid
Abdul-Latif, authorities said he approached someone in 2011 about attacking a
military installation. That citizen alerted law enforcement and worked with
them to capture Latif and an accomplice.
FoxNews.com’s
Liz Torrey contributed to this report.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/06/22/anatomy-terror-threat-files-show-hundreds-us-plots-refugee-connection.html?AID=7236
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