Terrorism Border Threat Update
Importing Terrorists
Obama’s Citizenship Push for Immigrants the Focus of New Judicial Watch Lawsuit
Judicial Watch Uncovers Email Describing Hillary Clinton as “Often Confused”
Judicial Watch and a small band of patriots in Washington have been highlighting the existential threat to our nation caused by the lack of border security and the Obama administration’s lawless approach to immigration. We have also exposed the dangerous pro-Islamist approach to counter-terrorism by the Obama administration that, for instance, saw Obama administration officials working with Islamists and terrorist fronts in putting forth the lie that an Internet video, rather than Islamic terrorists, were responsible for the attack on our facilities in Benghazi.
After last week’s terror attacks in France, likely assisted by at least one ISIS terrorist who posed as a Syrian refugee, it would be reasonable to think that good sense might prevail on the Islamist terrorist threat. Unfortunately for the safety of America, the Obama administration doubled down on its dangerous and dishonest radicalism.
As the bodies of Islamic terrorist victims were still being identified in Paris, and as France went into a state of war in response to the carnage, the Obama administration’s first substantive move on Islamic terrorism was to use the focus on the Paris attacks to release five al Qaeda terrorists from our secure military facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Obama, on a crusade to close Gitmo, is releasing terrorists from the facility on a regular basis, and is reportedly planning to try to move the terrorists into the United States despite a law absolutely prohibiting him from doing so. With Obama, amnesty isn’t limited to illegal aliens – it includes the kinds of terrorists who murdered dozens in Paris and, just today, in Mali.
The release of terrorists isn’t enough for this administration; it imports terrorists, as well. Or, in the case of alleged refugees from what we are supposed to believe is Syria, Barack Obama would admit thousands from the center of the terrorist storm in the Middle East without any serious security background checks. Rather than listen to the American people, who oppose the refugee proposal in large and bipartisan numbers, Obama’s plan to spend your tax money to bring 10,000 refugees from Syria to the United States is moving full speed ahead.
Judicial Watch has long been monitoring this issue and reported over a month ago on how our national security officials confess they can’t vet these refugees for terrorist ties:
During a recent congressional hearing a director with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), which operates under the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), confirmed that the U.S. has no method of vetting the new refugees because the Syrian government doesn’t have an intelligence database to run checks against. It’s actually embarrassing to watch the footage of the DHS director, Matthew Emrich, getting grilled by the senator who chairs the committee that conducted the hearing a few days ago. The session was held to address the fiscal and security implications of the Obama administration’s refugee resettlement program.
Under questioning from Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions, Emrich admits that there is no reliable way to assure that individuals coming from Syria are properly checked. The exchange lasts about seven minutes and Emrich sounds desperate when he says “we check everything that we are aware of” and that “we are in the process of overturning every stone.” The bottom line is that there is no way to verify the identity of Syrians so the defeated Homeland Security official proceeds to say that “in many countries of the world from which we have traditionally accepted refugees over the years the United States government did not have extensive data holdings.”
Obama’s own FBI Director reconfirmed that there is no reliable way to “certify” these refugees will not pose a threat to national security.
Obama’s reaction to efforts to either slow down or, most appropriately, stop this refugee madness has been venomous. As is typical in Washington, the extremist Obama opposes modest (and likely ineffective efforts) to slow his refugee program down. Republicans (and many Democrats) are now defending a bill that, some suggest, would do little to stop Obama from pursuing his plans to increase the flow of refugees from Syria here by a factor of 20 times! I suppose a fake debate over a piece of legislation that would do nothing to address a serious problem is better than what typically goes on in Washington, D.C., as at least border security and the terrorist threat are under debate here.
Once again, Judicial Watch is in the middle of this debate – exposing the facts, exploding the corrupt lies, and educating Americans about this core national security issue.
We helped get the ball rolling on the refugee issue on Fox News this past Sunday. At the end of that interview, I suggested citizens ask their local leaders whether they were going to allow Syrian refugees to settle in their towns. We predicted that would be the issue over the next few weeks. Well, the American people needed no prodding as governors from across the nation immediately revolted and said their states would not allow Obama to settle refugees from Syria, for now, in their states (to see if your state is on the list of objectors, click here for a map.)
In addition, as the refugee debated heated up in Congress this week, it was Judicial Watch’s Pulitzer Prize-deserving reporting on the border terror threat that helped drive the argument for the pausing of the refugee program. Key House members pushing for tough border security cited our work, noting our April 2015 report that “ISIS was operating training bases in close proximity of the U.S. Southern border.” Last year, our Corruption Chronicles first broke the news of Islamic terrorists on the border, including the fact they have already entered the United States through the Mexican border. Moreover, Homeland Security sources have told JW that four terrorists were apprehended by federal authorities and the Texas Department of Public Safety in McAllen and Pharr. We alerted Americans that ISIS is operating in a Mexican border town just eight miles from El Paso, Texas.
Let me close with a point that you won’t hear anywhere else but may well know as a Judicial Watch supporter: the Benghazi scandal and the ISIS disaster are connected.
We proved this beyond all doubt in documents we forced out of the Obama gang thanks a court order issued in a May 15, 2014, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit we filed against the Defense and State Departments. The headlines from our May press release tell it best:
Administration knew three months before the November 2012 presidential election of ISIS plans to establish a caliphate in Iraq
Administration knew of arms being shipped from Benghazi to Syria
That material provided the first official confirmation that the U.S. government was aware of arms shipments from Benghazi to Syria. The documents also included an incredibly important August 2012 analysis, warning of the rise of ISIS and the predicted failure of the Obama policy of regime change in Syria. The August 2012 document, from the Defense Intelligence Agency, deserves careful review by anyone interested in the ISIS threat and how it could have been prevented. As our release noted:
[T]he opposition in Syria was driven by al Qaeda and other extremist Muslim groups: “the Salafist, the Muslim Brotherhood, and AQI are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria.” The growing sectarian direction of the war was predicted to have dire consequences for Iraq, which included the “grave danger” of the rise of ISIS:
The deterioration of the situation has dire consequences on the Iraqi situation and are as follows:
This creates the ideal atmosphere for AQI [al Qaeda Iraq] to return to its old pockets in Mosul and Ramadi, and will provide a renewed momentum under the presumption of unifying the jihad among Sunni Iraq and Syria, and the rest of the Sunnis in the Arab world against what it considers one enemy, the dissenters. ISI could also declare an Islamic state through its union with other terrorist organizations in Iraq and Syria, which will create grave danger in regards to unifying Iraq and the protection of its territory.
Some of the “dire consequences” are blacked out but the DIA presciently warned one such consequence would be the “renewing facilitation of terrorist elements from all over the Arab world entering into Iraqi Arena.”
This DIA report is getting new attention these days, most recently in The New York Times this week. No wonder Obama gets so crazy when pushed on the Syria disaster, as this documents his alliance with jihadists in Libya led not only to the killing of four Americans in Benghazi but helped spark the ISIS war that threatens to ensnare the West in another world wide war.
Our litigation, our reporting, our investigation, and our educational efforts on these national security and related immigration/border issues won’t slow down. Your Judicial Watch takes the Islamist terrorist threat seriously, especially when the politicians of both parties move on to other, petty topics. You can track our work here, at www.judicialwatch.org. Please get the word out about our essential work to your elected leaders, family, friends, and colleagues.
Obama’s Citizenship Push for Immigrants the Focus of New Judicial Watch Lawsuit
Further proof that the Obama administration is a menace to the rule of law, our nation’s security, and our republican form of government can be found in the background behind just one new Judicial Watch Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit. Judicial Watch attorneys filed the lawsuit last month to obtain records related to letters sent by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to current green card holders, urging individuals to become naturalized U.S. citizens prior to the 2016 election.
In April 2015, President Obama’s “White House Task Force on New Americans” issued a strategic action plan to help millions of green card holders become U.S. citizens. Immigration Services is reportedly reallocating vast resources away from its “Electronic Immigration System,” a computerized system designed to facilitate national security and criminal background checks, to a campaign of letters to all nine million green card holders urging them to naturalize before the 2016 election. The Obama administration’s push includes federal funding for leftist groups that advocate for illegal aliens and amnesty.
On May 14, 2015, Judicial Watch submitted a simple Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to Immigration Services asking for:
- Records related to letters sent by [Immigration Services] to current green card holders urging such individuals to become naturalized U.S. citizens prior to the 2016 election, including, but not limited to, memoranda, guidance, and/or instructions provided to [Immigration Services] staff regarding such letters and records of [Immigration Services] funds allocated to such efforts.
Judicial Watch sued after the agency, despite telling us it received our request, simply refused to respond to us in any way. You probably are not surprised by the lawless cover-up given the issues (and likely corruption) at stake.
Obama’s effort to replace the American electorate with one more amenable to his despotic approach government means getting the millions of aliens to apply for and be granted citizenship as quickly as possible. However, Immigration Services is obligated to conduct a criminal and security background investigation of an immigration applicant upon his or her filing for naturalization.
We can’t trust this to happen.
In 2012, Immigration Services abandoned required background checks, adopting, instead, “lean and lite” procedures in effort to keep up with the flood of amnesty applications spurred by President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) executive amnesty, an expansion of which has been ruled illegal by the federal courts. Nevertheless, thousands of illegal aliens exempted from deportation under Obama’s unilateral amnesty moves are also potentially eligible for citizenship. The Obama administration has already admitted into the United States a large number of people with documented ties to ISIS and other radical Islamic groups. By the way, refugees (from Syria, Somalia, and other countries) can become citizens as soon as six years after receiving refugee or asylum status. President Obama is dead set against serious background checks for refugees from these Islamist regions.
Despite the release of criminal aliens by the administration and other immigration non-enforcement, violations, and failures, the administration is reportedly expanding the naturalization effort.
The Obama “New American” initiative is reminiscent of Al Gore’s Clinton-era “Citizenship USA” program, which saw citizenship applications approved without the required FBI criminal background checks in the run-up to 1996 presidential election, in which President Clinton was reelected. As our friends at PJ Media report:
Naturalization plus mobilization is the explicit aim of the DHS “Task Force on New Americans.”
Multiple sources at DHS confirm that political appointees are prioritizing naturalization ahead of the 2016 presidential election.
Empirical voting patterns among immigrants from minority communities demonstrate that these new voters will overwhelmingly vote for Democrat candidates. If the empirical rates of support for Democrats continued among these newly naturalized minority voters, Democrats could enjoy an electoral net benefit of millions of new voters in the 2016 presidential election.
I hope you see what is happening.
The Obama administration is violating the federal transparency law to cover up it plans to use tax money to rush through citizenship for millions of legal and illegal aliens just in time for the 2016 elections. Americans should wonder about whether this administration is importing voters and granting unilateral amnesty to help win elections at the expense of the safety and security of American citizens.
Judicial Watch Uncovers Email Describing Hillary Clinton as “Often Confused”
It became evident this week why Hillary Clinton was willing to violate the law to keep her government records (and those of her top aide Huma Abedin) away from the American people.
Getting information is never easy, as we had to file another Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit just get the government emails the ethically-challenged Abedin sent and received on the illicit Clinton email server.
We forced out 35 pages of emails from Abedin’s “[email protected]” address that are interesting and disturbing.
The first revelation you may have already heard about. The Abedin email material contains a January 26, 2013, email exchange with Clinton aide Monica Hanley regarding Clinton’s schedule in which Abedin says Clinton is “often confused:”
- Abedin: Have you been going over her calls with her? So she knows singh is at 8? [India Prime Minister Manmohan Singh]
- Hanley: She was in bed for a nap by the time I heard that she had an 8am call. Will go over with her
- Abedin: Very imp to do that. She’s often confused.
That embarrassing email, unsurprisingly, went viral this week.
But another set of emails shows the Clinton email system was potentially dangerous. The newly released Abedin emails included a lengthy exchange giving precise details of the Clinton schedule on the secretary’s final full day in office, Wednesday, January 31, 2013. The email from Lona J. Valmoro, former Special Assistant to Secretary of State Clinton, to Abedin, other top State Department staff, and Clinton associates, reveals exact times (including driving times) and locations of all appointments throughout the day:
8:25 am DEPART Private Residence
En route to State Department
[drive time: 10 minutes]
***
1:40 pm DEPART State Department
En route to Council on Foreign Relations
[drive time: 15 minutes]
***
3:05 pm DEPART Council on Foreign Relations
En route to State Department
[drive time: 15 minutes]
***
6:00 pm DEPART State Department
En route to Private Residence
[drive time: 5 minutes]
The detailed schedule provided in the Abedin email contains an annotation reading: “The information contained in this email is not to be shared, forwarded or duplicated.” Can you imagine the threat to Clinton and others if that type of information got into the wrong hands? We should thank Heaven that Clinton’s contempt for the rule of law in her use of this separate system didn’t result in tragedy.
There is a revelation that shows that sensitive information that could impact foreign relations was put on the unsecure Clinton email server. You can see that in yet another Abedin email that provides embarrassing details about a meeting with Saudi Arabia’s leadership. (The email shows Clinton had zero interest in meeting with a top Saudi government official during a visit to that nation.)
And of course there are revelations about the typical Clinton corruption from conflicts of interest and influence peddling operations at the State Department.
The Abedin correspondence includes several instances in which the Clinton top aide attempted to obtain special treatment from the State Department for business associates and relatives. In the first instance, Abedin apparently worked with Teneo co-founder and Clinton Global Initiative official Doug Band to intercede on behalf of an individual seeking a visa.
In the second instance, Abedin received an email from her mother, Saleha Abedin (a controversial Islamist activist) who founded and serves as dean at Dar al-Hekma University in Saudi Arabia. In the December 11, 2011, email, Saleha Abedin seeks the assistance of her daughter to help the president of her college, Dr. Suhair al Qurashi, attend a State Department “Women in Public Service” ceremony, which included remarks by Hillary Clinton. (Mrs. Clinton spoke at Dar al-Hekma University in 2010. Dr. Qurashi and Saleha Abedin introduced Clinton’s speech and moderated the subsequent discussion.)
Abedin’s description of Clinton as “easily confused” tells you all you need to know about why it took a federal lawsuit to get these government emails from Clinton’s illegal email server.
These emails also show that Hillary Clinton’s and Huma Abedin’s decision to use the Clinton email server to conduct government business was both risky and dangerous. You can see how, ironically, ensuring that government officials like Hillary Clinton follow the law and security requirements in the conduct of government business are as much about protecting these very officials from harm as it is about the protecting the rule of law.
TOP NEWS
