Gowdy Demands Answers on Influx of Syrian Refugees -Republican Wants End to Secrecy in Choosing Resettlement Sites

The Syrian civil war has caused 3.5 million refugees, with more than 350,000 being targeted by the United Nations for resettlement outside the region.

Leo Hohmann / WND

Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., has sent a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry demanding information about the reported pending move of dozens of foreign refugees from Syria, North Africa and elsewhere into South Carolina.

Gowdy is chairman of the House Judiciary Subcommittee responsible for the refugee resettlement program overseen by the State Department. Yet, he says in the letter, he was kept totally in the dark about the proposed resettlement of refugees into his own district in Spartanburg, South Carolina.

Ann Corcoran, a longtime watchdog over the refugee program and author of the Refugee Resettlement Watch blog, says Gowdy is the first member of Congress to demand answers to basic questions about this program since she took up her crusade eight years ago to expose secrecy, fraud and lax oversight in the program.

The program has flown under the radar for more than 25 years but controversy flared in February when a top FBI counter-terrorism official, Michael Steinbach, testified before the House Homeland Security committee and said the U.S. has no way to vet the Syrian refugees for possible connections to the Islamic State, also called ISIS, and other terrorist organizations. As WND reported, Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, sent a letter to the White House Jan. 28 citing “serious national security concerns” about the Syrian refugee program and imploring Obama to not let it become a “back door for jihadists.”

In fact, dozens of Islamic refugees from Iraq, Somalia and other countries have already been charged and convicted of providing material support to foreign terrorist organizations while others have left the country to fight for ISIS in Syria and al-Shabaab in Somalia.

Now, Gowdy has taken the fight for information on exactly how this program works to a new level, demanding answers for the Spartanburg resettlement from none other than John Kerry.

But he needs to go one step further, Corcoran said. As chairman of the subcommittee charged with overseeing this program, Gowdy must demand answers for the communities in all 49 states that participate in the U.S. refugee program, not just his own state or district. That would require holding hearings, she said, because this issue affects communities across the U.S., not just Spartanburg.

Read more at WND:

http://www.wnd.com/2015/04/congressman-demands-answers-on-influx-of-syrian-refugees/