In a high stakes gamble with Americans’ safety and security at risk, President Joe Biden is rolling the dice again.
Capitol Hill insiders confirm the administration is considering providing refugee status to Palestinians from the Gaza Strip via mass parole, an immigration authority the president has abused since he entered the White House. The Immigration and Nationality Act requires that parole status be granted only on a temporary, case-by-case basis to satisfy a compelling, urgent humanitarian need. In blatant violation of the INA, Biden has doled out parole en bloc to millions of illegal immigrants.
The Biden administration has amassed a long list of immigration crimes that endanger the public. Top among them is his red-carpet welcome to an unknown total of millions — perhaps 10 million or more — of unvetted illegal aliens whose backgrounds and intentions are unknown. Municipalities have struggled to provide shelter, health care, education and other affirmative benefits to illegally present foreign nationals.
So far, Biden has avoided a terrorist attack, but his good fortune is running out. In FY 2023, some 736 known or suspected terrorists were apprehended at the northern or southern border. The gotaways, an estimated 1.6 million over a three-year period, doubtlessly include dozens more terrorists.
The nation knows that at least one likely active terrorist, a Jordanian national who crossed the southern border illegally in May, recently breached Virginia’s Marine Corps Base Quantico in a box truck. Accompanied by another Jordanian national whose F-1 student visa expired in May, another immigration crime that converts his temporary visa status to illegal immigrant, the pair claimed they were Amazon subcontractors making a delivery. Amazon had no knowledge of the Jordanians as employees or subcontractors. The Department of Homeland Security refuses to release their names; the FBI and Immigration and Customs Enforcement are mum.
Dave Katz, a former Drug Enforcement Administration agent and federal firearms instructor, warned the box truck incident was likely “a dry run for driving a box truck that was not going to be empty the second time.”
The Jordanians are not DHS’ only national security concern. In North Carolina, two illegal alien Chechen men were caught trespassing past sunset outside a U.S. Army Special Operations Command officer’s home. The men had cell phones with Russian language contacts. One, Ramzan Daraev, claimed to work as a subcontractor for Utilities One, but had neither electrical equipment nor identification. Utilities One is a foreign-registered New Jersey-based company founded in 2016 by a young Moldovan CEO three years after he moved to the U.S.
When confronted near a power line in a wooded part of the property, an altercation ensued, and the Army officer shot and killed Daraev. Authorities questioned the second Chechen, Dzhankutov Adsalan and, despite his being illegally present, released him. The violated Special Op’s family told news outlets that the Chechens were photographing their children.
To call the Quantico and North Carolina incidents suspicious, threatening and a threat to national security is an understatement.
Despite these frightening incidents as well as the 30,000 unvetted Chinese who have surged the border but that no White House official cares about, Biden seems determined to invite more trouble. Accepting Gazan refugees would heighten national security risks to levels not seen since before 9/11. Before taking the drastic step that would admit Gazans as refugees, give them work permits, and put them on a path to citizenship, Biden and the State Department should familiarize themselves with an analysis by The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, “Teaching Terror, How Hamas Radicalizes Palestine.”
The institute concluded Hamas radicalizes Palestinians support, fund, facilitate and participate in terrorist attacks. In 1997, the State Department designated Hamas as a terrorist organization. Even though Hamas calls itself a local resistance group, it targets foreign audiences with web-based terrorist messages. Hamas raises the majority of its $2 billion budget abroad, including funding from Iran, United Nations agencies and so-called charitable groups.
Two-term Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, wrote a pointed letter to Biden that 34 Republican senators co-signed, demanding a full accounting of his Gazan refugee vision. Biden, to quote Ernst, “is blowing off my work to prevent an Oct. 7-related attack on our own shores.”
The White House referred Ernst’s letter to the DHS, which further blew her off with the false promise that “Any individuals from Gaza who have traveled or would travel to the U.S. are thoroughly vetted, as the safety and security of the American people is our top priority.”
The reality is the administration has no intention to track, much less remove dangerous actors posing as refugees. A new DHS report revealed how it has failed to track the 77,000 Afghan refugees admitted into the country. The consequences of the Afghan withdrawal blunder remain to be seen.
Biden has his hands full enough without tempting fate further with Gazan refugees. The White House’s first obligation is to rescue American citizens, not Gazans.
Joe Guzzardi is an Institute for Sound Public Policy analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years.
