Another DHS Official Confirms: No Way to Vet Syrian Refugees

As the Obama administration prepares to take in 10,000 Syrian refugees, a second high-ranking Homeland Security official admits there’s no way to screen the new arrivals from the war-torn Muslim nation that’s a hotbed of terrorism.

During a recent congressional hearing a director with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), which operates under the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), confirmed that the U.S. has no method of vetting the new refugees because the Syrian government doesn’t have an intelligence database to run checks against. It’s actually embarrassing to watch the footage of the DHS director, Matthew Emrich, getting grilled by the senator who chairs the committee that conducted the hearing a few days ago. The session was held to address the fiscal and security implications of the Obama administration’s refugee resettlement program.

Under questioning from Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions, Emrich admits that there is no reliable way to assure that individuals coming from Syria are properly checked. The exchange lasts about seven minutes and Emrich sounds desperate when he says “we check everything that we are aware of” and that “we are in the process of overturning every stone.” The bottom line is that there is no way to verify the identity of Syrians so the defeated Homeland Security official proceeds to say that “in many countries of the world from which we have traditionally accepted refugees over the years the United States government did not have extensive data holdings.”

Syria isn’t the typical country that sends over refugees, it’s a hotbed of Hezbollah militants and Al Qaeda-linked jihadists. Last year a study published by the RAND Corporation concluded that the most significant threat to the United States comes from terrorist groups operating in a handful of Middle Eastern countries that include Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

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