By Brandon Moseley
Alabama Political Reporter
Thursday, September 13, 2016, US Senator Jeff Sessions (R-Alabama) repeated his concerns that terrorists will infiltrate the refugee population to launch attacks on the US.
Senator Sessions warned in a statement, “Despite opposition by the American people, a documented link between terrorism and individuals admitted to the United States as refugees, and over $19 trillion in debt, the Obama Administration has committed the United States to admitting 110,000 refugees during Fiscal Year 2017—a roughly 57 percent increase in the number of refugees the United States admitted as recently as FY 2015, and a roughly 29 percent increase from the Administration’s target for FY 2016.”
Sen. Sessions said, “The common sense concerns of the American people are simply ignored as the Administration expands its reckless and extreme policies.”
Sessions said, “Terrorists have announced that they will infiltrate the refugee population and have successfully done so multiple times in Europe over the last year. These asylum-seekers are overwhelmingly male who make the journey from hotbeds of terrorism to countries throughout Europe. Earlier this year, General Philip Breedlove, who served as NATO’s top commander, said that ISIS was ‘spreading like cancer’ among the refugee population. And unsurprisingly, there have been numerous terror attacks in Europe this year linked to the refugee crisis. Indeed, just this past weekend, Germany’s Interior Minister said that there are more than 500 terrorists inside Germany alone who are capable of carrying out terrorist attacks. It is all but certain that many of those potential terrorists exploited the refugee crisis to get to Germany, and that there are likely thousands more all across Europe today.”
The conservative Alabama Senator said, “Here in the United States, we face the same risks. The Director of National Intelligence, the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Secretary of Homeland Security have acknowledged that terrorists could infiltrate the refugee population. And for good reason—as it is clear that terrorists have done so successfully in the past. The Director of the FBI has testified that he cannot certify that every refugee admitted to the United States is not a security threat, and recently compared the FBI’s anti-terrorism mission to ‘looking for needles in a nationwide haystack’ while also figuring out ‘which pieces of hay might someday become needles.’ Regardless, President Obama and his Administration are now pushing their extreme policies even further by stubbornly placing the requests of the United Nations above the safety of the American people by surging refugee admissions to 110,000.”
Sessions said, “The Administration’s claim that the program costs roughly $1.5 billion drastically understates the true costs of initial resettlement—as it does not include costs for programs such as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, Medicaid, or Supplemental Security Income, among others.”
Sessions added, “In addition to the very serious national security implications and the initial resettlement costs, admitting 110,000 refugees will result in an enormous long-term financial burden on the taxpayers. Robert Rector, Senior Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, has estimated that the total lifetime cost of admitting 10,000 refugees —which includes all costs at the federal, state, and local level—is $6.5 billion. Using Mr. Rector’s numbers as a baseline, admitting the 110,000 refugees that the Obama Administration proposes to admit beginning on October 1 will result in a total lifetime cost to the taxpayers of $71.5 billion. This would be added every year that these levels are continued.”
Sessions said, “The simple fact is that it would be safer and more cost-effective to establish safe zones for refugees as close to their homes as possible—particularly for those from the Middle East. One estimate found that resettling one refugee in the United States was nearly 12 times more expensive than providing care for that refugee abroad.”
Sessions called Obama’s resettlement policies, “A complete betrayal from their leaders in Washington.”
Late on Saturday, a Somali born man, Dahir A. Adan, age 22, . Speaking to the newspaper through an interpreter, Ahmed Adan, injured nine people (seven men and two women) during a bloody rampage at a St. Cloud, Minnesota shopping center. Adan has lived in the U.S. for the last 15 years.
ISIS-related media claimed responsibility for the attack and called Adan “a soldier of the Islamic State.” The assault ended when the attacker was shot and killed by off-duty police officer Jason Falconer.
FBI special agent in charge Richard Thornton said, “We are currently investigating this as a potential act of terrorism.”
This attack followed bombings in New York City and New Jersey. That case is still under investigation.
Sen. Sessions has been highly critical of President Obama’s immigration policies.
