Thirty-four governors have stated that they would not accept Syrian refugees due to glaring security flaws in the vetting system. The State Department said that they have no authority to close their borders, but they could make the resettlement initiative more difficult by refusing to participate. Pro-refugee groups are scrambling to fight the narrative that these Syrians are a national security concern. For Democrats, there appears to be a state-level strategy in the works to place pressure on Republican governors refusing to relocate refugees. The Washington Free Beacon had the scoop:
In a conversation at a Capitol Hill coffee shop on Tuesday afternoon, Rep. Joaquin Castro (D., Texas) and Nick Rathod, head of the State Innovation Exchange, discussed the need to enlist Democratic mayors to put political pressure on those governors.[…]
“I’d love to be strategizing and organizing with you guys” on the refugee issue, Castro told Rathod, a former Obama White House official who took the helm at the State Innovation Exchange (SiX) last year.
[…]
Progressives are looking around to figure out where to go to push back, and there has not been a vehicle to do that at the state level—it’s the biggest missing piece in the progressive infrastructure,” Rathod said at the time.
After Castro left, he and two other SiX staffers continued discussing the refugee issue and its potential for dinging Republican officials at the state level.
“You need to get the mayors the talking points, and data research to back it up,” Rathod told the staffers.
Some at the meeting expressed concern that the issue could backfire.
“We need to be really careful,” one SiX staffer said. “Have we thought how terrorists were able to get through all these refugees?” another asked. “Have we thought through this so we’re not making a bad argument?”
Rathod reassured them.
“I feel pretty comfortable that the refugees aren’t the way a terrorist would get in. It’d be through Canada,” he said. But, he added, “It’s always a risk.”
Indeed. The Daily Mail reported that authorities caught refugees from Bosnia and Somalia after it was discovered they had planned ISIS-inspired terror attacks on U.S. soil:
US authorities have charged at least 66 men and women with ISIS-related terror plots on American soil – including a handful of refugees, Daily Mail Online can reveal.The terror group has set its sights on Washington, D.C. as it vows to further infiltrate the West and ramp up its blood-soaked offensive.
Presidents Obama insists says that 'slamming the door' on Syrian refugees fleeing ISIS would be a betrayal of American values.
But 34 governors are refusing to take in any more, in case jihadi fighters slip into their states and repeat the carnage of Paris.
Analysis by Daily Mail Online reveals that a handful of foiled plots have already involved immigrants accused of harboring sympathy for ISIS.
The threat also comes from within, with American teenagers and Islamic converts among those seduced by the group’s torrent of chilling online propaganda.
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