A longtime federal immigration agent confirms there is no good way to vet tens of thousands of refugees effectively for possible admission to the United States and he says history proves being wrong about just a tiny fraction of them can lead to calamity.
Michael Cutler served for 30 years with the Immigration and Naturalization Service, or INS, the forerunner to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. During that time he worked as a senior special agent, and focused on matters ranging to refugee arrivals in New York City to combating narcotics trafficking.
Over the weekend, Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes repeatedly assured Americans there were guaranteed ways of separating genuine refugees from those who might try to exploit the crisis to slip into the U.S. and attack our country. President Obama echoed those comments on Monday at the G-20 Summit in Turkey. Former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Pete Hoekstra told us Monday that Rhodes lied to the American people and that no such system was in place.
Cutler says Hoekstra is exactly right.
“We do not know who these people are and that’s a big problem not only where the Syrian refugees are concerned. How many times can you get burned by the same match?” asked Cutler.
He says the system is far from foolproof for a very simple reason.
“We know that terrorists and criminals use fraud in their applications for visas, fraud in their applications for immigration benefits to enter the country and hide themselves,” said Cutler.
Beyond that, Cutler says the U.S. would need to have a cooperative relationship with the Assad regime in Syria. Not only do we not have that, he says Syria may not even have records on many of these refugee applicants.
“This is a very real threat. We are in the middle of a war. If our government is going to make mistakes, it better make mistakes on the side of America,” he added, suggesting our current policy would seem like lunacy in a previous generation.
“This is as absurd as thinking back to the Second World War and imagining FDR calling up Adolf Hitler’s people and asking if refugees coming to America through Germany posed a threat to our safety,” said Cutler.
What actually is happening is equally concerning, according to Cutler. He says the current immigration system is doing little to weed out potential threats.
“The approval rate for the refugee applications from Syria by our government stands at more than 90 percent,” he said. “It only takes minutes to approve an application but days or weeks to deny an application. The pressure is on to clear the backlog. Every time you hear people say, ‘Yay, the government’s going to work faster.’ Don’t get excited, folks. What it means is they’re going to rubber-stamp approvals.”
Cutler says even a few mistakes in reviewing refugee applications could be disastrous for our country.
“Let’s say we admit 10,000 and only one percent are bad actors. We’re talking about hundreds of terrorists potentially entering the United States,” said Cutler.
Cutler points out that 19 young terrorists killed more people on 9/11 than the Japanese Navy killed at Pearl Harbor. He says we see the carnage inflicted by just a few radicals on a regular basis.
“Only 19 did what they did. It took eight terrorists to carry out the attacks in Paris. It took two terrorists to wreak havoc on the Boston Marathon just two years ago. How many times. How many times do we have to see history repeat itself and say there’s something terribly wrong with what we’re doing,” said Cutler.
He says the longer Obama insists there’s no threat posed by refugees, the more his credibility suffers.
“I am so tired of the misleading facts, if you want o call them facts, being paraded by this administration in particular. I’m old enough to remember the (Lyndon) Johnson administration and his credibility gap when he talked about Vietnam. Here we have more than a gap. This is a chasm and it’s as big as the Grand Canyon,” said Cutler, a registered Democrat.
Cutler also pushed back against the notion that his opposition to refugee acceptance is rooted in xenophobia. He says his early days at the INS prove that’s wrong as we welcomed refugees at JFK airport.
“For me it was a privilege, an absolute joy, to admit refugees into the United States. These folks got off the airplane, walked into the international arrival building, fell to their knees and kissed the floor, I kid you not. They hugged me. They kissed me on the cheek. They cried. I cried with them,” said Cutler.
“I have nothing against refugees but if and only if it doesn’t undermine national security and this would absolutely do inestimable damage to national security,” added Cutler.
