“Religious” Rahman Reminds Us...
By Bill West
The FBI has issued an alert to US law enforcement concerning potential terrorist attacks stemming from the possible death of imprisoned Shiekh Omar Abdel Rahman, an Egyptian Islamic cleric affiliated with the conspirators in the first World Trade Center bombing, who was convicted in 1995 of conspiring to bomb other buildings and infrastructure in New York. Law enforcement and Intelligence officials fear his death while in US custody may spark revenge attacks by jihadists against the United States, though they claim no specific threats have been identified.
Recent reports of massive fraud within the US religious worker visa program, particularly as it relates to perpetrators from Muslim “special interest” countries that produce significant numbers of Islamic jihadist terrorists, and faltering US Government efforts to counter such fraud, are ironically timed with Abdel Rahman’s failing health and the FBI security warning.
The “Blind Sheik” entering the United States was arguably one of the greatest singular immigration failures in US history. He was issued a tourist visa and allowed to enter the US while on a terrorist lookout list. Even after this, he was later granted permanent resident alien status (issued a “green card”) as a “religious worker.” To its credit, what was then the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) was the first US Government agency to initiate overt action against Abdel Rahman by eventually revoking his permanent resident status and placing him under deportation proceedings before he was criminally indicted. But that was several years after his bogus entry into the US in the first place.
Those critical immigration mistakes took place in the early 1990s when the senior leadership and policy-makers within the INS and the Department of Justice viewed immigration authorities as mere token players (at most) in counter-terrorism and national security matters, and that in spite of specific decades-old statutes within Immigration and Nationality law relating to terrorism and national security. Things improved slightly, but only slightly, before the 9/11 attacks. After 9/11, the INS and later the replacement agency ICE under DHS devoted additional agent resources to counter-terrorism matters; however, as we have seen with report after report and study after study since 9/11, the implementation of truly substantial and meaningful operational and structural changes in the way border security and immigration policy and process is conducted by the United States has changed little. Mike Cutler’s posting today concerning the failure to implement immigration-related recommendations of the 9/11 Commission speaks volumes to this issue.
It is truly amazing that 60+ years ago this nation fought a world war against multiple well-armed nation-states, and in less time than we have now been in Iraq, America prevailed in that war and managed to build thousands of ships, planes, tanks and other war machines and secretly develop the atomic bomb in the process. We fielded hundreds of thousands of men under arms. We resolutely defeated our enemies. In the past fifteen years, we haven’t been able to figure out how to make the religious worker visa program keep out terrorists or drop below a one-third fraud rate or how to make the biometric border entry/exit system, US VISIT, fully work (the departure control half is still years from becoming operational). Perhaps it is time for excuses for the errors and failures to end.