By Faye Higbee
Yesterday, the mystery over how an al-Qaeda leader entered the United States and when ended. It was revealed that Ali Yousif Ahmed al-Nouri came here in 2008 posing as a refugee who had escaped al-Qaeda’s evil clutches. He even filed for disability benefits, claiming he had 20 bullets in his body put there by al-Qaeda militants. Despite being wanted himself in Iraq for the premeditated murder of Iraqi police officers in 2006, he has been living in Arizona, where he opened a driving school.
The miscarriage of U.S. justice that made this farce possible is something called the Refugee Crisis in Iraq Act. It was introduced in Congress in 2007 by the late Sen. Ted Kennedy and co-sponsored by Sens. Joe Biden, Pat Leahy, Chuck Hagel, Dick Durbin, Bob Menendez, and Barack Obama.
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The law was hailed as a “less burdensome” way for Iraqi refugees to come to the U.S. As Sen. Kennedy asserted at the time, “The United States has a clear responsibility to support these brave Iraqis who have stood by us.” But since the program as designed processed Iraqis “in country” rather than the United States, refugees were not properly vetted.
That raises the question how many more al-Nouris are there among the 13,823 Iraqis who came here under that law.
So who was al-Nouri back in the old country? He was the “emir” of al-Qaeda in Fallujah. Fallujah was the site one of the bloodiest battles fought in Iraq.
Daniel Greenfield of the David Horowitz Freedom Center has more on the terrorist in our midst:
1,050 Iraqi refugees were resettled in Arizona in 2008. Iraqis were the number one refugee group resettled everywhere from Alabama to Virginia. But Arizona had the highest share of Iraqis in any state outside Michigan’s Islamic enclaves. Al-Nouri became one of 12,329 Iraqi refugees operating in Arizona.
When Al-Nouri came to this country, Arizona was accepting the most refugees per capita of any state. Money for resettling refugees poured into the state which was happy to take in Muslims from Yugoslavia, then Sudan and Iraq. The Iraqi community in Phoenix boomed. Along with Al-Nouri. …
… Iraqis in Phoenix have already come to Al-Nouri’s defense, describing him as a popular figure in the community. They claim that they had no idea that he could have been an Al Qaeda terrorist.
That’s unlikely.
In a culture with massive extended families and tribes whose members do everything, whether it’s fighting Al Qaeda or joining Al Qaeda as a group, coming out of a major Iraqi city, Al-Nouri’s story would not have fooled everyone in his community. But Al-Nouri was far from the only terrorist to come to America as a refugee. We don’t know how many terrorists who pretended to be fighting Al Qaeda tricked the system to come to America. And we don’t know how many more are coming now.
Arizona has continually asked for more refugees, last September asking President Trump to allow more of them, according to the Phoenix New Times. As recently as December 2019, Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey — a Republican! — defiantly stated that Arizona will “continue” to welcome refugees. Even when the state doesn’t know who it’s getting.
(h/t Uncle Sam’s Misguided Children)
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