City rips secret
planting of Syrian 'refugees', Groping at public pool brings issue to fore in Massachusetts, by
Leo Hohmann, 7/12/16, WND
The secrecy of the
federal refugee-resettlement program has once again been highlighted by a local
official who has seen the dark side of the program play out in living color.
In Lowell,
Massachusetts, a 13-year-old girl was twice groped at a public pool last week
by a 22-year-old man freshly imported into the community from Syria as a
“refugee.” The city manager of Lowell told his local newspaper Tuesday that he
was not even notified by the U.S. State Department or its resettlement
contractor that Syrians were being delivered to his community.
Emad Hasso, 22, of Syria
pleaded not guilty Friday to inappropriately touching the girl at the state-run
Raymond Lord Memorial Pool in Lowell, according
to the Lowell Sun. This marks the second
high-profile sexual assault on an American girl in the past month by a refugee.
On June 2, a 5-year-old girl in Twin Falls, Idaho, was reportedly raped
by an Iraqi refugee boy
while an older refugee from Sudan filmed and coached him during the assault.
Hasso is one of 18
Syrians, all of them most likely Sunni Muslims, who have been secretly planted
in the Lowell community since May, according to the State Department’s Refugee
Processing Center online database.
City Manager Kevin
Murphy said he’d like to receive regular numbers from the federal contractor
that resettles refugees in the city. The International Institute subcontracts
with the main federal contractor, U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants,
or USCRI, to deliver refugees to Lowell.
The city does not know
when or from where refugees come to Lowell, Murphy said, and is only made aware
of them in instances like this one where a refugee gets arrested or otherwise
singled out for bad behavior.
“I think we’ll reach out
to the International Institute to see if they could cooperate with us in the
future by letting us know when they relocate individuals to Lowell,” Murphy
said.
Secrecy of refugee program a widespread problem
Refugee watchdog Ann
Corcoran, who has been following the federal refugee program for nearly nine
years, said lack of transparency is the most oft-cited issue by critics, which
has included many mayors and governors.
“This is the way they
have been running the program forever. They arrogantly have been operating in
secrecy for two decades, under the arrogant assumption that we the taxpayers
don’t deserve to know what is going into our communities, what the costs are,
what the security risks are, and so forth,” Corcoran told WND.
Refugee resettlement
agencies like USCRI, Catholic Charities and Lutheran Social Services hold
quarterly “stakeholder meetings” in most communities, but the taxpaying public
is never notified of these meetings. And no legal ads or notices about what is
discussed at the meetings is ever posted by the resettlement agencies working
as fronts for the federal government.
“People don’t like
secrecy, and that’s why we are seeing backlash in every community where this
program has been exposed,” Corcoran said. “Unfortunately, there are still many
communities where it operates completely in the shadows, and residents have no
idea what is going on with these refugees.”
The mayors of
Springfield, Massachusetts; Amarillo, Texas; Athens, Georgia; Manchester, New
Hampshire, and several other towns have all complained to the Obama
administration that they want more information on refugees before their
arrival.
More than 24 mostly
Republican governors have also complained, writing letters to the Obama
administration after the attacks on Paris and San Bernardino last year that
they did not want to receive any Syrian refugees until a better screening
system could be devised.
Citizen activists have
complained about the same lack of transparency in many other cities including
Spartanburg, South Carolina; Twin Falls, Idaho; Fargo, North Dakota; Rochester,
Michigan; Missoula, Montana; and several areas of Tennessee.
But nothing has deterred
the Obama State Department, which has ignored the complaints and concerns,
citing the Refugee Act of 1980 as the source of its authority. That law,
authored by the late Sen. Ted Kennedy and Joe Biden, gives the states and
localities very little power to stop the influx of refugees.
Corcoran said basic
information like how many refugees are coming, where they are coming from and
what public services they will be using are all vital for any city or county
that is serious about controlling its government and school budgets.
Unfortunately, it is
usually only after something bad happens that a community starts pressing for
more information. Usually a woman or girl gets sexually assaulted by a refugee
or a refugee gets arrested for a heinous crime or terroristic threat or action.
Then residents start asking questions and learning about the numbers of
refugees already resettled in their community and how many social services they
are using. For example, more than 90 percent of refugees from the Middle East
are on food stamps, according to the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement, and
74 percent are on Medicaid.
The International
Institute, which resettles refugees in Massachusetts and signs them up for
government welfare programs, referred all questions to the U.S. State
Department.
Refugees are subject to
state and federal laws, and can be removed from the country if convicted of
certain crimes, a State Department spokesperson told the Sun. But that rarely
happens, according to Corcoran.
State Department
officials stressed to the Sun that refugees are put through extensive security
screening before coming to the United States.
But that is in direct
opposition to President Obama’s own FBI director, James Comey, who testified
before Congress last year saying it’s virtually impossible to vet the Syrian
refugees due to a lack of intel and law enforcement data on them.
FBI counter-terror
specialist Michael Steinbach told Congress the same thing, saying there is no
data to verify the identity of Syrian “refugees” in a “failed state” like
Syria. That begs the question: How can the U.S. government vet refugees from
other failed states and partially failed states like Somalia, Sudan, Iraq and
Afghanistan?
A total of 85,000
refugees are being permanently resettled in more than 190 U.S. cities and towns
during fiscal year 2016, up from 70,000 in 2015. President Obama plans to
increase the ceiling again in fiscal 2017, to 100,000.
Obama’s expanded refugee
plans, fully funded by the GOP-controlled Congress, call for 10,000 Syrians to
be permanently resettled in the U.S. in fiscal 2016, which ends Sept. 30.
With a little over two
months to go before the Sept. 30 deadline, Obama has thus far delivered 5,449
Syrians to the U.S. They are now arriving at a rate of nearly 400 per week.
Where the Syrians are being sent
Some of the cities
receiving heavy numbers of Syrian refugees are the following
·
Atlanta, Savannah and
Stone Mountain, Georgia;
·
Asheville, High Point,
Raleigh-Durham, Greensboro and Charlotte, North Carolina;
·
Columbus, Toledo and
Cleveland, Ohio;
·
Buffalo, Albany and
Syracuse, New York;
·
Omaha, Nebraska;
·
Erie, Philadelphia,
Harrisburg and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania;
·
Dallas, Austin and
Houston, Texas;
·
Salt Lake City, Utah;
·
Louisville, Kentucky;
·
Baltimore and Silver
Spring, Maryland;
·
Dearborn, Grand Rapids,
Troy, Ann Arbor and Clinton Township, Michigan;
·
Tampa, Clearwater and
Jacksonville, Florida;
·
Glendale, Tucson and
Phoenix, Arizona;
·
Chicago, Indianapolis,
San Diego, Sacramento and Los Angeles.
Obama ignored the
concerns of the governors and began delivering Syrians en masse to almost every
state along with a steady stream of Somali, Afghan, Iraqi and Burmese Muslims.
Syrian in Lowel claims groping was ‘accident’
Hasso was arrested by
environmental police at the pool area in Lowell. The girl told police Hasso
asked her age and twice touched her on the upper thigh. In court, Hasso said
through an interpreter he may have accidentally bumped into the girl but did
not assault her.
Hasso is part of one of
four Syrian families resettled by the International Institute from October 2015
through July.
Hasso’s family was
resettled into 82 Willie St. in the city’s Acre neighborhood, the Sun reported.
A man who answered the door at that address Monday evening provided a piece of
paper to the Sun reporter Amelia Pak Harvey, indicating that he did not speak
English.
Prosecutor Sam Miller
reported on Thursday the 13-year-old girl said a man approached her, touched
her upper thigh and asked her age. The girl told him she was too young for him
and walked away.
Hasso then allegedly
followed the girl around the pool. While swimming, he again approached her,
touched her upper thigh and asked her age. Miller said the girl responded that
she was a “little kid, leave me alone.” At that point, other people at the
pool, including the lifeguard, saw some of the interaction between Hasso and
the alleged victim and intervened.
Migrant sex assaults mounting in Europe
The news of the groping
of the 13-year-old girl mirrors the problems that European countries such as
Sweden, France, Italy and Germany have had with Muslim migrants who have surged
into those countries over the past two years. Many German towns have had to
temporarily ban co-ed swimming and Sweden’s famed co-ed bathhouses have had to
post signs instructing migrants that they are not allowed to touch female
bathers’ breasts or other body parts.
Muslim sex attacks at
public swimming pools in Europe are so frequent that Muslims have been banned
in multiple areas, including all
of Austria
In May, a 20-year-old
Afghan migrant was arrested after sexually
assaulting a six-year-old boy in
the changing room of a Munich sports hall.
Sweden
is at the top of the E.U.’s statistics on physical and sexual violence against women, sexual harassment
and stalking. A police report stated unequivocally that it is “asylum-seeker
boys” and “foreign men” who commit the vast majority of the reported crimes.
Just last weekend, five
rapes and 40 cases of “severe groping” were
reported to police at a free concert in
Karlstad, Sweden.
As WND has previously
reported, most young men who have grown up in Shariah-compliant countries like
Afghanistan, Sudan, Iraq, Somalia and Syria have been taught that a woman who
uncovers herself and isn’t wearing a hijab is “asking” to be raped.
To unleash these young
men into public swimming pools without putting them through intensive cultural
sensitivity training is simply irresponsible, Corcoran said.
In Sweden, the problem
has gotten so bad that Swedish women have started “vigilante patrols” as
swimming pools, the
Independent reports.
The screening process
for refugees begins in the refugee camps run by the United Nations and from
there moves to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
USCIS would not comment
on Hasso’s specific case, but the Department of Homeland Security can opt to
remove a refugee if a criminal conviction occurs. But that rarely occurs,
Corcoran said.
Refugee resettlement
stirred some concern in Lowell this spring, when there were rumors of hundreds of
Syrians streaming into the city. In fact, the stream has started with a
trickle, perhaps because of the complaints.
Judge Stacey Fortes set
Hasso’s bail at $25,000 cash after Hasso pleaded not guilty to one count of
indecent assault and battery on someone under 16. He was ordered to stay away
from the alleged victim and the pool and is due back in court on July 29 for a
pretrial conference. He had not posted bail as of Monday night, according to a
spokesman for the Middlesex Sheriff’s Department.
http://www.wnd.com/2016/07/city-rips-secret-planting-of-syrian-refugees/#!
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