In the aftermath of the Boston Marathon killing spree by foreign-born jihadists, see-no-evil bureaucrats in Washington are stubbornly defending America’s lax asylum policies. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told the Senate on Tuesday that the screening process is rigorous, effective and extensive.
These people can’t handle the truth. Or tell it.
The Tsarnaev brothers reportedly were granted asylum by “derivative” status through their parents. After entering on short-term tourist visas, the mother and father won asylum and acquired US citizenship. Next, younger son Dzhokhar obtained US citizenship. Tamerlan, whose naturalization application was pending, traveled freely between the United States and the jihad recruitment zone of Dagestan, Russia, last year.
Though they’d convinced Uncle Sam that they faced deadly persecution, the Tsarnaevs’ parents both returned to their native land and were there when their sons launched last week’s terror rampage. Authorities won’t reveal any details of the sob stories the Tsarnaevs originally spun to win asylum benefits for the entire family.
The whole thing stinks. And it’s an old, familiar stench. Immigration lawyers have been working the system on behalf of asylum con artists for decades. The racketeers coach applicants with phony stories and documents from “chop shops” and game their way through “refugee roulette.”
Asylum and refugee claimants are being rubber-stamped at all-time-high rates. Government data analyzed by the nonpartisan Web site TRAC show that “the odds of an asylum claim being denied in Immigration Court reached an historic low in FY 2012, with only 44.5 percent being turned down. Ten years ago, almost two out of three (62.6 percent) individuals seeking asylum lost their cases in similar actions. Twenty years ago, fewer than one out of four (24 percent) asylum applicants won their cases, while three out of four (76 percent) lost.”
Why won’t Washington err on the side of public safety by re-examining and overhauling our fraud-riddled asylum, detention, deportation and visa-issuance policies after Boston?
The Tsarnaevs were not the first murder-minded jihadists to benefit from ineffective policing of our asylum and refugee policies. As I’ve reported previously:
* Ramzi Yousef landed at JFK airport from Pakistan and flashed an Iraqi passport without a visa to inspectors. He was briefly detained for illegal entry and fingerprinted, but was allowed to remain in the country after invoking the magic words “political asylum.” He was released for lack of detention space and headed to Jersey City to plot the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
* Gazi Ibrahim Abu Mezer, a Palestinian bomb-builder, entered the United States illegally through Canada in 1996-97. He claimed political asylum based on phony persecution by Israelis, was released on a reduced $5,000 bond posted by a man who was himself an illegal alien and then skipped his asylum hearing. In June 1997, a federal immigration judge ordered Mezer to leave on a “voluntary departure order.” Mezer ignored him. He joined the New York City bombing plot before being arrested in July 1997 after a roommate tipped off local police.
* Mir Aimal Kansi, convicted in 1997 of capital murder and nine other charges stemming from his January 1993 shooting spree outside the CIA headquarters in McLean, Va., also exploited our insane asylum laxity. Despite his history as a known Pakistani militant who had participated in anti-American protests abroad, Kansi received a business visa in 1991. After arrival, he claimed political asylum based on his ethnic minority status in Pakistan. While his asylum application was pending, he obtained a driver’s license and an AK-47, murdered two CIA agents and wounded three others.
* Somali national Nuradin Abdi, the al Qaeda shopping-mall-bomb plotter convicted in 2007, first entered the United States in 1995 using a false passport. He entered again illegally from Canada in 1997 and secured asylum on false grounds. Abdi then was able to fraudulently obtain a refugee travel document, which he used to fly to Ethiopia and, yes, Chechnya for jihad training.
* Among the convicted Fort Dix (NJ) jihad plotters were three ethnic Albanian illegal alien brothers — Dritan, Shain and Eljvir Duka, who snuck into the country through Mexico with their parents. In 1984, the father applied for asylum, but the feds ignored them for two decades. In the meantime, as America showed the Dukas’ refugee community unmatched compassion and generosity, the Muslim trio returned the favor by planning to massacre US soldiers.
As always, political correctness and political pandering are the handmaidens of terrorism.