GOP senators have demanded that the Biden administration stop its plans to accept Gazan refugees into the United States over concerns of possible terrorist ties.
In a letter dated May 1 to President Joe Biden, Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) and 34 other GOP senators raised national security concerns over the White House’s allowing these refugees from “this high-risk population for terrorist ties and sympathies.”
“We demand that your administration cease planning for accepting Gazan refugees until you adequately answer our concerns and focus your attention instead on securing the release of U.S. hostages held by Hamas,” the senators wrote.
The letter is in response to an article by CBS News on April 30 reporting that the Biden administration is considering welcoming certain Palestinians to the United States as refugees.
According to the report, in recent weeks, senior officials from several federal agencies in the administration have discussed possible plans to resettle Palestinians from Gaza who have family members who are U.S. citizens or U.S. permanent residents.
The senator warned that Hamas now controls a majority of the Gaza Strip and that U.S. officials have limited access to the area, which makes it difficult for them to conduct comprehensive vetting before admitting these refugees into the United States.
A poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research released in March found that 71 percent of Palestinians in Gaza supported Hamas’s decision to launch the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people. The poll also revealed that 52 percent of Gazans want Hamas to remain in power. Notably, nearly all Gazans (93 percent) think Hamas did not commit atrocities against Israeli civilians, while 94 percent think Israel committed war crimes instead.
In the letter, the senators also questioned the effectiveness of the Biden administration’s border policy that they said added to their concerns for the federal government’s ability to effectively vet refugees in Gaza, which is far away from the United States.
According to Customs and Border Protection statistics, border patrol officials arrested 169 people on the federal terrorist watch list in the 2023 fiscal year. This marks the highest annual number since Border Patrol was established in 1924.
“We must ensure Gazans with terrorist ties or sympathies are denied admission into the United States—no easy feat, given the fact that the Gazans were the ones who voted Hamas into power in 2006. Without thorough vetting, your administration may inadvertently accept terrorists posing as refugees into the interior,” the letter reads. “This is especially the case as Hamas terrorists have a long track record of co-mingling with civilian populations in Gaza.”
In addition, the senators are concerned that the refugee plans could worsen the existing tension at the Egypt–Gaza border, as more Gazans might flood the area in hopes of leaving for the United States.
“We are confused as to why the United States is willing to accept Gazan refugees when even nearby Arab countries supportive of the Palestinian cause refuse to take them in due to security concerns,” the letter reads.
The senators asked President Biden to answer several questions, including confirming the number of refugees that the White House wants to accept, the screening process to prevent those with terrorist ties from being admitted into the United States, the cost of the plan, whether U.S. officials have consulted with partners in the region, and the housing locations for refugees.
U.S Refugee Processing Centers to Open in Middle East
Last month, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced a plan to open field offices in Qatar and Turkey to increase refugee processing capability and other purposes.
A report from the Federation for American Immigration Reform released in April warned of potential security risks. It noted that the Biden administration “is already seeing that asylum applications, refugee status, and humanitarian parole authority are being routinely exploited by economic migrants to gain quick entry to the U.S.”
“The two refugee processing centers in the Middle East could only make this easier, increasing our national security risk,” it stated.
The report also indicated that Arab states refuse to accept refugees because of possible security risks, while “sadly, the U.S. seems less cautious in this respect.”
Immigration Is Top Voter Concern
According to a recent Gallup survey, for three consecutive months, a steady 27 percent of Americans named immigration as the most important problem the country faces. This saw immigration take the top spot in monthly surveys three times in a row—the first time the issue has held this position in the past 24 years.
An earlier poll taken in March by The Associated Press suggested that more than two-thirds of Americans disapprove of the Biden administration’s handling of immigration compared with 31 percent who say the president is doing a good job. A slight majority of 56 percent of Democrats approved of the president’s immigration policies, while just 20 percent of independents and 9 percent of Republicans expressed positive attitudes.
Bill Pan contributed to this report.
Death, social violence, chaos, hatred, envy and corruption follow these Palestinian harrowing Hamas hangmen of hatred wherever their corrupt filthy carcasses are found, and their political ideologies that hide the real face of their true political origins that are disguised as a religion, are promoted. They are short fuses just awaiting a match to set them off, and believe me,,,Joe Biden’s impaired brain, paired with the innate inborn Palestinian hatred and envy of people capable of actually loving their fellow men and love their own children more than they love their violence and hatred, will NEVER prove to be an American match made in heaven, but a match struck on a University tinder box whose flames lit in America soon reflect the beheadings of an October 7th Gaza surprise. When in doubt, KEEP THEM OUT and send them all back to the middle east where Jihad self-destruction is their comfort zone. The greatest lie told by the devil is that he does not exist. The greatest lie told by Palestinians is that they are just normal people capable of controlling their innate violence and hatred of others taught to them by their menacing Mullahs from the cradle, that eventually leaves them to their early well-earned graves. Just what kind of fool would populate a peaceful America with such people of violence? Democrat party American hating Politicians with criminal evil intentions that’s who,,,Democrat doctors who only plant the political cancers, never cure or cut them out.
Kuwait, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan have all had to fight and/or expel the Arab “refugees” that they accepted from the Judean region. That’s why Egypt is making their border wall with Gaza even bigger.
There are good Semites like the peace-loving Israeli’s and bad Semites like the beheading loving anti-gay hating Hamas, who next will be claiming they have been abused in anti-Semite hatred in Gaza to the same degree the Jews were in 1930’s-40’s Germany. Hamas cannot derogatorily call Jews as anti-Semites because they themselves are Semites,,,Duh! The people of Gaza don’t want the Hamas leadership they elected now that their cities are being destroyed because of that leadership, but apparently the got the kind of leadership they deserve,,,just like The People of American Democrat run inner cities ended up getting the leadership they wanted, and the destroyed streets, businesses, and Universities they deserve. Sooner or later the people living in these American inner cities will finally get the message like the Egyptians and other Arab countries who now understand is that not all Semites nor socialist communist Americans are created equal. Current Demonstrators tearing up our universities are the worst of BOTH worlds,,,thanks to Joe Biden.
As i’ve said TIME AND TIME again, IF THEIR OWN FELLOW ARABS don’t want them, WHY should any other sane nation, be FORCED to take them in?!
Someone has to do something. What should Presidents team do?
Every time I go through a airport I’m Reminded of 9/ 11. We don’t need Terrorist In this country.
TOO bad. Based on all theze college “Protests”, they are already here.