EXCLUSIVE: Background checks for Somali refugees or not?

By Andrew Cochran

MUST ATTRIBUTE: The State Department convened a high-level meeting of multiple agencies last week to discuss immigration policy for Somali refugees. The Justice Department, FBI, CIA, and Homeland Security Departments, and possibly other agencies, were present to debate whether such refugees should continue to be allowed into the country without extensive background checks, or change the policy to require such checks. The intel and enforcement communities want stringent checks before Somalis enter, while the State Department apparently opposes such a change. The meeting was described to me as "a finger-pointing session" at which no clear decision was made.

Somalia has been a center of al Qaeda activity for years, as indicated in the 9-11 Commission staff statement, "Overview of the Enemy," and many other sources. Recall that al Qaeda-trained Somalis executed the "Black Hawk Down" raid in Mogadishu that killed 18 U.S. Army troops in 1993. More recently, a Somali who illegally immigrated into the U.S., Nuradin Abdi, was indicted in an al Qaeda plot to bomb an Ohio shopping mall and faces trial in September (one co-conspirator was convicted and sentenced).

I have not learned whether this meeting was instigated by an event or piece of intelligence. It follows a Supreme Court decision on the deportation of a Somali refugee that reaffirmed the Executive Branch's power to deport illegal aliens who are under final removal orders, as discussed by Bill West here. I wonder if the change in leadership at State led the bureaucrats there to try to cement the current policy before Secretary Rice began. It will be most interesting to see whether she backs her bureaucrats in this, or agrees with the intel and law enforcement communities and changes the policy.

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