California Arrest Vindicates President Trump’s Travel Ban

One of the interesting side effects of the reflexive opposition to Trump that has flooded many parts of the political spectrum, is that even when he’s right, it becomes a badge of honor to oppose him. Case in point: the revocation of John Brennan’s security clearance. “National defense conservatives” are literally squirting their drawers in defense of Brennan’s First Amendment right to be able to discuss classified information for profit. Perhaps the most odious example of this was opposition to his executive order restricting travel from a small number of failed states and from one state sponsor of terrorism (Iran). The anti-Trump forces successfully framed this as a “Muslim ban” despite the fact that a huge majority of Muslim-majority nations was not on the list.

Yesterday, the reason behind that travel order became very obvious.

Omar Ameen, 45, an Iraqi national, wanted on a murder charge in Iraq, appeared before a federal magistrate judge in Sacramento, California today in connection with proceedings to extradite him to face trial in Iraq. Ameen settled in Sacramento as a purported refugee and attempted to gain legal status in the United States.
…
The Iraqi arrest warrant and extradition request allege that after the town of Rawah, Iraq fell to the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) on June 21, 2014, Ameen entered the town with a caravan of ISIS vehicles and drove to the house of the victim, who had served as an officer in the Rawah Police Department. On the evening of June 22, 2014, after the caravan arrived at the victim’s house, Ameen and other members of the convoy allegedly opened fire on the victim. Ameen then allegedly fired his weapon at the victim while the victim was on the ground, killing him.

Ameen, originally of Rawah, in the Anbar province of Iraq, fled Iraq following the alleged murder, and later settled in Sacramento as a purported refugee. It is alleged that Ameen’s family supported and assisted the installation of al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) in Rawah, and that Ameen was a member of AQI and ISIS. It is also alleged that he participated in various activities in support of those terrorist organizations, including helping to plant improvised explosive devices, and committing the murder that is the subject of the extradition request. Ameen concealed his membership in those terrorist groups when he applied for refugee status, and later when he applied for a green card in the United States.

This guy was a member of ISIS and of al-Qaeda, his family were ISIS were al-Qaeda and ISIS supporters, and yet, the Obama administration allowed him into the United States as a refugee and he used that status to start the process of becoming a permanent resident.

Seamus Hughes, the deputy director of the George Washington University Program on Extremism, said the case was likely to put a further spotlight on the already red-hot issue of refugees.

“It’s clear there were breakdowns in the refugee vetting system on this case as a lot of the information on him was readily available,” said Mr. Hughes, who maintains a thorough database of Americans who joined the Islamic State. “The F.B.I. has been watching him for the last two years, but he was a known commodity in Iraq for nearly a decade. This is not the first case of a failure in the refugee screening process, but one of the most serious I have seen.”

And, believe it or not, we’ve had the attacks on Trump’s executive order repeated right here on RedState despite ample evidence that there was a widespread breakdown of screening of alleged refugees (my post at the time).

Several dozen suspected terrorist bombmakers, including some believed to have targeted American troops, may have mistakenly been allowed to move to the United States as war refugees, according to FBI agents investigating the remnants of roadside bombs recovered from Iraq and Afghanistan.

The discovery in 2009 of two al Qaeda-Iraq terrorists living as refugees in Bowling Green, Kentucky — who later admitted in court that they’d attacked U.S. soldiers in Iraq — prompted the bureau to assign hundreds of specialists to an around-the-clock effort aimed at checking its archive of 100,000 improvised explosive devices collected in the war zones, known as IEDs, for other suspected terrorists’ fingerprints.

The infusion of ISIS and al-Qaeda soldiers into the refugee stream is not unique to the United States. Earlier this month, a young Yazidi woman who had been kidnapped and sold to an ISIS soldier ran face-to-face with her “owner” on a German street. He had been admitted to Germany as a refugee, just like her.

In #Germany
Ashwaq meets Abu Humam,the ISIS militant who hd bought her in Iraq’s Mosul for $100
“The police told me that he is also a refugee,just like me,&that they could not d anything about it.They just gave me a phone No. that I could contact in case AbuHumam ever stopped me pic.twitter.com/5O7GjX1KJj

— Yazidi (@Ezidi2) August 14, 2018

We reported a while back on the peculiarity of the refugee stream emanating from Syria and entering Europe by way of our good friends the Turks. A majority of those refugees are male (according to the UN High Commissioner on Refugees, 56% are male)…this is unheard of in terms of refugee populations…and a clear plurality of those refugees are military aged males.

This is not a shock. A ISIS was rolled up and the ISIS soldiers faced an unpleasant fate if they stuck around, the safest place for them was getting registered as a refugee and making tracks for Europe.

In short, Trump’s travel restriction was not only prudent, it would have been criminal to not impose it. You can bet that this guy is not a singular incident.

Next up: they’ll argue that he’s eligible for political asylum because of fear of persecution and that he’ll be eligible for the death penalty in Iraq. This is not over by a long shot.

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