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December 6, 2008
Exclusive: Are Somali-Americans Training as Terrorists?
A disturbing news report about the possibility of Somali-Americans training as terrorists should concern you as much as is does me and the former INS colleague who forwarded it to me. It ties in with my recent commentary about suicide bomber Shirwa Ahmed, who was identified as being a “naturalized United States citizen.”
Here’s the money quote from the ABC report about Ahmed:
The officials believe Shirwa Ahmed, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Somalia, blew himself up in a suicide bombing in northern Somalia Oct. 28.
You have to wonder how Mr. Ahmed managed to acquire United States citizenship. Was he one of the 111,000 aliens whose immigration files were "lost" in 2005, who then had their applications for various benefits, including United States citizenship, adjudicated without the file? Or was it simply a matter of the general state of dysfunction and incompetence that we have seen reported upon in government report after government report?
The report about the Somali-Americans linked above mentions Ahmed, but fails to identify or even note that he was believed to have been a "suicide bomber." What it does note, however, is the fact that there are concerns today that the group of some 20 to 40 Somalis who had been living in the United States had gone "missing" and may have left the United States to receive terrorist training.
Here is the real question: If the fears are justified and those two dozen or more young men have, in fact, gone off to train in terrorist tactics, will they then seek to return to the United States to take up there lives in various communities around our nation as they await orders to carry out an attack in the United States? Are they U.S. citizens who would use their citizenship to easily cross international borders to enter a country allied with America to carry out a terror attack there?
The problem we have with individuals who are involved in terrorism is that when they naturalize they may still retain their foreign passports and then alternate – using their passport from their country of birth with their United States passport to cover their tracks as they cross international borders.
As we saw with the devastating terrorist attacks staged in Mumbai, India last week is that the terrorists needed to get to India from Pakistan in order to carry out their massive attacks in India. The 9/11 Commission similarly noted the need terrorists have to travel internationally and then to embed themselves in the country that they attack.
There’s also the lunacy of a statement by Michael Chertoff, the soon-to-be former Secretary of Homeland Security, when he touted the doubling of the number of Border Patrol agents while decrying the failure of the Congress to pass a massive legalization program for the estimated 20 million illegal aliens currently living in the United States.
Chertoff and the administration have absolutely failed to even discuss the disastrous situation where immigration fraud is concerned. Additionally, the extremely dangerous Visa Waiver Program is now being expanded, although that program should have been brought to a screeching halt the morning after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
Meanwhile, advocates for open borders are licking their chops in anticipation that the new administration will do the unthinkable – provide millions of illegal aliens whose identities, backgrounds and affiliations and intentions are unknown and unknowable, with United States citizenship.
The immigration lawyers who anticipate a windfall in millions of new clients have taken to the tactic of renaming Comprehensive Immigration Reform "CIR." The politicians who are supposed to represent the best interests of our nation and our citizens know that Americans are absolutely opposed to comprehensive immigration reform so they apparently plan to jam it down our throats by renaming it and sliding it past us in the dead of night!
My aim is to alert you to the challenges confronting our nation. Now it is up to you, the citizens of this nation, to contact your elected representatives and demand that they represent you and your family and to protect our nation. This is the burden all Americans must bear.
The safety of our nation begins at its borders. It is therefore essential that our borders be secured and that our immigration bureaucracy not only honor those who abide by the laws, but also seek to weed out those who would commit fraud and those who would assist them.
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Michael Cutler is a Fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies and a recognized authority who addresses the implications of immigration on national security and criminal justice. Feedback: editorialdirector@familysecuritymatters.org.
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