“Somebody dropped the ball”
THE CENTER FOR IMMIGRATION STUDIES is reporting the latest case of so-called ‘refugees’ scamming the American asylum/refugee system.
In a nutshell:
Two Ethiopians filed refugee applications in 2013, claiming to be Somalis.
Since Somalia didn’t have checkable intelligence records.
They turned out to be former members of the al-Shabaab terrorist group who were funneling money to terrorists still in Africa.
Todd Bensman reports that gaming our asylum system is happening all the time but what’s most concerning are the ‘refugees’ coming from terrorist countries.
One tally found an entirely unacceptable 13 cases of vetting failures involving actual terrorists caught or killed between 9/11 and April 2018. Bensman says that the number is higher than what’s reported and that is a concern. Thirteen cases of terrorist are 13 too many considering there were only 19 who carried out 9/11.
Bensman reports on three of the latest terror-connected ‘refugees’ who lied to get asylum and become American citizens:
George Z. Rafidi, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine
Texas resident George Z. Rafidi, a Ramallah-born Palestinian Arab living and running businesses just this side of the Mexican border in the Lone Star State’s Rio Grande Valley, is a case in point. Cameron County law enforcement and the FBI recently raided Rafidi’s home and businesses, charging him and associates for allegedly operating illegal “eight-liner” slot machine casinos. The raids got a few localized headlines. But underground casinos are not the story with Rafidi. He has been living in the United States for nearly 20 years with a terrorist background doing who knows what beyond running slot machines.
Since April 2018, Rafidi has stood federally charged with covering up his terrorist activities on applications for asylum in 2000, lawful permanent residence in 2003, and U.S. citizenship in 2012. He successfully gamed the system all three times, according to court records, when it seemed the briefest of due diligence checks at any point would have rolled up Rafidi.
Mahmad hadr Mahmad Shakir, a.k.a. “Vallmoe Shqaire”, Palestine Liberation Organization
“CNN Investigates” reporter Scott Glover deserves credit for an eye-opening report published last week, titled “How a convicted terrorist became a US citizen”. The similarities to the Rafidi case inescapably raise questions as to whether American adjudicators have some sort of blind spot when it comes to Palestinian Arab applicants and a seeming inability to pick up a phone and call Israel.
He had to illegally omit the disqualifying facts of his life history and make sure no one had his real birth name.
Mohamed Abdirahman Osman and Zeinab Abdirahman Mohamad, al Shabaab
I’ve already written about Tucson, Ariz., refugees Mohamed Abdirahman Osman, 28, and Zeinab Abdirahman Mohamad, 25. But this case bears mentioning again. Osman and Mohamad are an Ethiopian couple with several children who filed refugee applications in 2013 at the American embassy in Beijing, China, claiming they were Somalis (because, unlike Ethiopia, Somalia has no checkable intelligence records on its terrorists). The whole family was living as legal permanent residents, thanks to a completely bogus cover story, until Osman and Mohamad were arrested in 2017 and it all came unraveled.
IF THAT’S NOT ENOUGH, OUR REPORT FROM EARLIER TODAY:
Gaming the system of asylum or just being smuggled into America are two ways terrorists can infiltrate America. The example below is one of six Yemeni men who were smuggled across our border:
JORDANIAN PLEADS GUILTY To Smuggling Six Yemenis Over Texas Border: “Basaa, Rsad, Mah, Has, Hahah, an Aaam”
“Border security is national security. We simply cannot have an immigration system that allows people from all over the world to enter this country without detection. We must know the identity of every person setting foot on U.S. soil, however they enter.” – US ATTORNEY JOHN BASH
At least half a dozen illegals from Yemen were smuggled into the US via Eagle Pass in the state of Texas.
They weren’t smuggled into the country by a Mexican coyote but by a Jordanian man who just happened to be living in Mexico.
Moayad Heider Mohammad Aldairi, 32, just plead guilty to bringing in the six Yemeni illegals, “Basaa, Rsad, Mah, Has, Hahah, an Aaam”, claiming it was for “financial gain”. The bigger question is if it was just for financial gain or something else because “border security is national security.”
READ THE INDICTMENT AT THIS LINK
While the Justice Department prosecutor in the case claimed there is a “grave security risk” in bringing the unvetted Yemenis across the border, the defense attorney for the smuggler called it “political posturing” by the Trump administration:
“It’s just one more step toward being anti-Muslim. It’s Trump persecuting Middle Easterners, primarily Muslims.” – Rusty Guyer, lawyer for the Jordanian smuggler
My San Antonio reports that between Oct. 31, 2017, and Dec. 12, 2017, six citizens of Yemen crossed illegally into the United States from Mexico through Eagle Pass. Captured at the border, all six identified Aldairi as their smuggler, telling Homeland Security investigators that they paid him varying amounts of money and that he gave them hard hats and construction vests to help them blend in better in the United States.
One of the immigrants took a cellphone video in which Aldairi can be seen explaining his smuggling methods to several members of the group, court records said.
Aldairi, the feds said, has no legal status to be in the United States himself. He is a citizen of Jordan, but has residency in Monterrey, Mexico, where he has lived for several years.
“In his fifteenth effort to secure a visa to enter the United States, the defendant told employees at the United States Embassy in Jordan that he had a wife who was a United States citizen and he wished to travel to her,” Hepburn wrote in government motion to keep Aldairi detained.
Homeland Security officials filed a criminal complaint against Aldairi on May 29, 2018, and obtained a warrant for his arrest, then kept the documents sealed for months as they investigated him. He was allowed to journey from Jordan to the United States and was apprehended when he flew in from London to LaGuardia airport in New York in July 2018. He has been jailed ever since, court records show.
