Obama administration admitted 1,519 foreigners with terrorist ties into the U.S.

Judicial Watch reports that the Obama administration has granted asylum or residency to 1,519 foreigners with terrorist ties. This information comes from an annual report to Congress by the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).

More than half of the terror supporters granted asylum or residency by Team Obama provided material support to terrorist organizations, according to the USCIS report. Other received military-type training from a terrorist organization (nine fall into this category), voluntarily provided medical care to members of a terrorist group, or solicited funds or recruited individuals for membership in a terrorist organization.

Nearly 200 of the terror supporters provided material support to “designated terrorist groups.” As Chuck Ross of the Daily Caller explains, designated terrorist groups are the most dangerous. They include groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, al-Qaeda and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

Why did the administration allow 1,519 people tied to terrorism to remain in the U.S. with all the rights and benefits enjoyed by legal residents? It did so because Obama’s DHS Secretary, Jeh Johnson, determined that the individuals in question participated in pro-terrorist activities “while under duress.”

But how can Johnson be sure of this? He wasn’t there, and neither was anyone from DHS. Naturally, the individuals seeking asylum and residency claim to have supported terrorism only under duress. But it’s unlikely that such claims are corroborated by trustworthy witnesses.

DHS says it compares applicants’ names and fingerprints against terrorist watch lists. But the absence of an applicant’s name from these lists doesn’t prove that his past support for terrorists was the result of duress.

Do you trust the government to make consistently accurate findings about what motivated these people to assist terrorists? I don’t. And keep in mind that if Johnson is wrong in only 10 percent of his determinations, that’s 152 true terrorists we have admitted into the country with resident status (with more to follow).

Until last year, all of these individuals would have had their applications denied. But in early 2014, the Obama administration unilaterally decided that DHS would, using its “discretion,” allow individuals who provided “limited material support” to terror groups to be considered for entry to and status in the U.S.

But why? Why grant asylum and residency to any “limited” supporters of terrorism?

I don’t know. But the decision is consistent with Judicial Watch’s claim that the Obama administration “seems to have a soft spot for terrorists.”

A few months after the INS change was exposed, a frustrated U.S. senator [Charles Grassley] revealed that the administration appears to have a terrorist “hands off” list that permits individuals with extremist ties to enter the country. The lawmaker obtained the information from internal DHS documents that include communication between U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) asking whether to admit an individual with ties to various terrorist groups.

In any event, it is Obama administration policy to grant U.S. residency to “limited” terrorists with a plausible sounding sob story. More than 1,500 of them have now been admitted with many more, I assume, to follow.

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