Noting the Obama Administration stonewalled an earlier request, two United States Senators are demanding family immigration histories for those suspected of connections with radical Islamic terror, including the husband-and-wife team alleged to have killed 14 and injured 21 in San Bernardino, California, this week.
“A response is not only long overdue, but urgent in light of a series of assaults, including: the heinous attacks in San Bernardino, California, the earlier attacks on the military recruiting center in Chattanooga, the Boston Bombing, and Congress’ imminent consideration of government funding legislation that would include funding for myriad immigration programs that have allowed for these events to occur,” Senators Jeff Sessions, R-Alabama, and Ted Cruz, R-Texas, wrote in a letter to U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch.
Cruz is a contender for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination.
The letter notes an August 12 request to Lynch for immigration history information on “72 individuals in the United States who have been identified as having a connection to terrorism over a one-year period.” The Senators note Lynch has “failed to comply with the request, sent more than three-and-half months ago.”
The pair tied their request to the San Bernardino shooting at a holiday party for the health department where Syed Rizwan Farook, 28, had worked for five years. He and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, 27, “wore ‘assault style clothing,’ described as ‘tactical gear,’ and authorities described their home as an ‘IED factory,’ with multiple pipe bombs and small explosives strapped to remote-controlled cars,” the letter noted. Both were killed in police shootouts, leaving a six month old daughter behind.
Sessions and Cruz added, “[Syed Rizwan] Farook is the child of immigrants who came to the United States from Pakistan, and Malik travelled to the U.S. from Saudi Arabia. According to the [Los Angeles Times]: ‘Farook recently traveled to Saudi Arabia and returned with a new wife he had met online.’ A CNN report added the following detail: ‘Farook traveled to Saudi Arabia for several weeks in 2013 on the Hajj, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca that Muslims are required to take at least once in their lifetime, which didn’t raise red flags, said two government officials. It was during this trip that he met Malik, a native of Pakistan who came to the United States on a “fiancée visa” and later became a lawful permanent resident.'”
The Senators noted, “Further, according to CBS News, sources say that the two viewed ISIS propaganda online, and separate reports indicate that Farook was in touch with other individuals being investigated for terrorism.
The letter also states that “among Muslim nations, Pakistan is the top recipient of U.S. green cards, having received 83,000 between FY09-FY13.”
According to the Reuters news agency, “Tashfeen Malik … moved with her family 25 years ago from Pakistan to Saudi Arabia, where her father became ‘conservative and hard-line,’ a family member [said]. CNN.com reported sources stating Tashfeen Malik had posted statements of support for ISIS while the gun battle in California was taking place.
These developments apparently have renewed the two Senators’ concerns: “In our struggle against terrorism, we are dealing with an enemy that has shown it is not only capable of bypassing U.S. screening, but of recruiting and radicalizing Muslim migrants after their entry to the United States. The recruitment of terrorists in the U.S. is not limited to adult migrants, but to their young children and to their U.S.-born children – which is why family immigration history is necessary to understand the nature of the threat.”
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