While DC debates religion, refugees, Iraqi Christians feel Uncle Sam's boot

Amid Washington’s raging debate over refugees and religion, more than two dozen Iraqi Christians who crossed into the U.S. from Mexico in hopes of joining their friends and families are being deported after their bids for religious asylum were rejected.
A total of 27 Chaldean Christians, driven from their homeland by Al Qaeda and ISIS, entered the country in April and May, hoping to join the thriving Iraqi Christian community in and around San Diego. But the door to America is being slammed on the 17 men and 10 women over what their supporters say are technicalities.
“These are families who were split up because of religious persecution, and now the government – which we love – is preventing them from being reunited,” said Fr. Michael Bazzi, of St. Peter Chaldean Catholic Cathedral, in El Cajon. “We wonder why, for thousands of Muslims, the door is open to America, yet Christians are not allowed to come.”

“We wonder why, for thousands of Muslims, the door is open to America, yet Christians are not allowed to come.”
- Fr. Michael Bazzi, St. Peter Chaldean Catholic Cathedral

The Chaldeans are among tens and possibly hundreds of thousands of Christians from Iraq and Syria who have been displaced by fighting and persecuted by Al Qaeda, ISIS and even the Iraqi government. But because some had first gone to Germany before making their way to the border, and in some cases were deemed to not have been forthcoming about it on their applications for religious asylum, they were held at the Otay Detention Center in San Diego since entering the U.S. while their applications were considered.  So far, 22 have been ordered out of the U.S. and the other five are awaiting a likely similar ruling.
“We will continue to seek to remove the ones who have been ordered removed,” Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman Lauren Mack told FoxNews.com.
Not all of those marked for deportation have been sent out of the country yet, and where they will go is not even clear.  As part of any removal operation, ICE must obtain a travel document for the individual they are removing.  Officials say the process can cause delays, sometimes for a very long time. If the country named on an immigration judge’s removal order refuses to accept the individual back, ICE must continue the process, while seeking to find another “safe country.”

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Father Michael Bazzi grew up new Mosul, but came to the U.S. in 1974. He says the Christian community in his homeland has been devastated by Muslim radicals. (PBS.org)

San Diego is home to one of the largest Chaldean populations in the country and several of the 27 were seeking reunification with other family members willing to take them in.
Their supporters say that holding the Iraqi Chaldeans responsible for mistakes made navigating the U.S. immigration bureaucracy is unjust given that the U.S, is currently considering fast-tracking the resettlement of 10,000 mostly Muslim refugees from Syria.
In September, Chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) introduced the Refugee Resettlement Oversight and Security Act. If enacted, it would help to mandate priority migration of victimized religious factions. But for the Chaldeans awaiting deportation or already deported, it may all be too little, too late.

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An Iraqi child works on a temporary mosaic of Pope Francis' face made from wheat, beans and lentils in Alqosh, a village of some 6,000 inhabitants about 31 miles north of Mosul, northern Iraq. (AP)

President Obama has objected to prioritizing Christians or other religious minorities over Muslims amid the current refugee wave, sparking a major debate with critics. Republicans and Christian leaders say persecuted religions should be afforded extra protection, while some in the GOP also say Islamic terrorists could hide among legitimate Muslim refugees from the Middle East.
“If the particular security threat you are concerned about is jihadist terror, there are no Christian jihadist terrorists,” Andrew McCarthy, the former assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York who led the 1995 terrorism prosecution against Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, told FoxNews.com. “But for the purpose of asylum analysis, the question is likelihood of persecution. There is no question that Christians face more persecution in Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East than Muslims do. We should acknowledge that Christians are being subjected to genocide and take steps to protect them.”
Although one of the most ancient civilizations in the world, Iraq’s Christian population has fallen from around 1.5 million in 2003 to far below 200,000 now in what many scholars condemn as tantamount to genocide.

Some University of Missouri students want to help choose school's next chancellor, president

Glen Beck

University of Missouri Terrorist?

Some University of Missouri students told the system’s governing body Friday they want some say in deciding who will become the next chancellor and president at the school’s main campus in Columbia and raised the argument the university needs more faculty of color.
The Board of Curators meeting was the first open for student input since protests over the administration’s handling of racial issues and the subsequent resignations of Columbia campus Chancellor R. Bowen Loftin and President Tim Wolfe. The upheaval caused the football team to strike and pushed the university into the national spotlight.
Concerned Student 1950 organizer Shelbey Parnell said the students, faculty and staff should have a role in who will succeed Loftin and Wolfe. Parnell said members of the system’s other campuses also need a voice in picking leaders.
She added that "implementation is worth more than advertisement ploys."
The board invited student input on Thursday, saying members wanted to hear about their experiences. Several students slammed the meeting’s timing, saying it was long overdue and scheduled too close to Thanksgiving, which begins Saturday.
"You should have had this meeting a long time ago," said Timothy Love, a graduate fellow in the English department. He added that he's interested in discussions "that end in effective results."
Chairman Donald Cupps said Friday was the first day board members could meet and that he had not realized the timing of the university break. He said the board has received requests the past few weeks from students wanting to address its members, and the meeting was the result of that.
Other suggestions from students centered on the need for more students of color and the treatment of graduate students. Requests from members of some graduate student organizations included higher stipends, affordable housing, paternity and maternity leave, and adequate health care.

Belgium raises terror alert to highest level in Brussels

Belgium’s capital was placed on a security lockdown as the national crisis center raised its terrorism alert Saturday to its highest level and at least one suspect from the Paris attacks remains at large.
The terrorism alert for Brussels was raised to Level 4, which indicates a “serious and immediate threat.”
Prime Minister Charles Michel said the decision to raise the alert level was taken "based on quite precise information about the risk of an attack like the one that happened in Paris...where several individuals with arms and explosives launch actions, perhaps even in several places at the same time."
Authorities across Europe, the Middle East and Washington are trying to determine how a network of French and Belgian nationalists with links to Islamic extremists in Syria plotted and carried out the deadliest violence in France since World War II – and how many may still be on the loose.
Brussels was home to the suspected organizer of the Nov. 13 terror attacks, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, and Belgium has filed charges of “participation in terrorist attacks and participation in the activities of a terrorist organization” against three suspects relating to the Paris attacks.
Heavily armed police and soldiers patrolled key intersections of the Belgian capital Saturday morning, a city of more than 1 million that is home to the headquarters of the European Union, the NATO alliance and officers of many multinational corporations. Residents were recommended to avoid gatherings, train stations, airports and commercial districts. Service was halted on the Brussels Metro, as well as on streetcar lines that run underground, and residents were urged to stay indoors.
 In Turkey, authorities detained three suspected Islamic State militants, including a 26-year-old Belgian of Moroccan descent.
The state-run Anadolu Agency said Saturday that the two Syrians and the Belgian national — identified as Ahmet D. — were detained near the Turkish coastal city of Antalya. The private Dogan news agency identified the Belgian as Ahmet Dahmani and said he is suspected of having explored areas in Paris that were targeted in the attacks.
Parisians across the French capital honored the 130 victims Friday night with candles and dancing, marking one week since attackers opened fire on sidewalk cafes and exploded suicide vests at the national stadium and an iconic rock venue.
Prosecutors said Friday that they had determined through fingerprint checks that two of the seven attackers who died in the bloodshed Nov. 13 had entered Europe through Greece, an entry point for many of the hundreds of thousands of migrants seeking asylum in Europe.
The five other attackers who died had links to France and Belgium. One of the seven dead has not been identified, while a manhunt is underway for one suspect who escaped, Salah Abdeslam, 26. French police stopped Abdeslam the morning after Friday's attacks at the Belgian border but then let him go.
French officials said Saturday they could not ascertain for certain whether Abdeslam might be in France or Belgium. His brother Brahim, blew himself up in the Paris attacks.
The suspected ringleader, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, was killed in a raid early Wednesday on an apartment in the Paris suburb of Saint-Denis, along with Hasna Aitboulahcen, a 26-year-old woman who officials said had described herself as Abaaoud's cousin. Prosecutors said Friday that a third person was killed in the raid but did not release the identity.
They also said Aitboulahcen had not blown herself up with a suicide vest, as it was initially believed, which suggests the body parts collected in the rubble after Wednesday’s anti-terror raid belonged to a third person who has yet to be identified.
Marking a week since the carnage, some Parisians lit candles and paid tribute to the victims with silent reflection. Others decided that enjoying themselves was the best way to defy the extremists. They sang and danced on Place de la Republique, in the heart of a trendy neighborhood where scores of people were killed, most of them in the attack on the Bataclan concert hall.
Demonstrations have been banned in the city since the attacks, but Parisians have been spontaneously gathering all week outside the restaurants, cafes and concert hall hit in the attacks to leave flowers, light candles or hold quiet vigils.
France's Senate on Friday voted to extend for three months a state of emergency, which expands police powers to carry out arrests and searches and allows authorities to forbid the movement of persons and vehicles at specific times and places. France's lower chamber has already approved the measure.
French President Francois Hollande is also going to Washington and Moscow next week to push for a stronger international coalition against ISIS.

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Senator pressing HHS for answers on ObamaCare ad spending

A Senate committee is looking into the millions of taxpayer dollars being spent on ads to promote ObamaCare enrollment.
FoxNews.com has confirmed the Health and Human Services budget for “paid media” is about $35 million for the current enrollment period – focusing on the 38 states using HealthCare.gov.
But Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, raised concerns that agency ad spending is becoming a “black box” that is difficult to track. Citing a study that also showed the total federal government budget for ads and PR was nearly $1 billion in fiscal 2013, Hatch recently fired off a letter to the acting head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) asking for a full accounting of agency ad spending.
“Increased transparency on government spending on advertising will improve accountability and help ensure that the taxes from hardworking Americans are not squandered and wasted on ineffective or misguided government programs,” he wrote to Acting Administrator Andrew M. Slavitt.
Politico first reported that HHS was spending the $35 million to run ads in English and Spanish to encourage people to sign up. Hatch cited the report in sending the letter to Slavitt.
An HHS spokesman declined to provide details to FoxNews.com beyond confirming that CMS planned to spend $35 million on paid media advertisements. The department is also using email and social media, and is partnering with 30 women’s organizations to target women, but it remains unclear whether those efforts are included in the HHS advertising budget.
The spokesman said in an email that they “have gotten smarter about how we reach people but we need to get even smarter, and the lessons we learn from testing will continue to pay dividends on enrolling the uninsured for years to come.”
Hatch’s committee set a Nov. 25 deadline for information on the spending. The push to promote the health care exchanges comes after HHS estimated 10 million people would enroll in ObamaCare by the end of 2016, a far lower number than the original prediction that enrollment would reach 21 million by the end of 2016. This comes as America’s largest insurer, UnitedHealth Group, suggested Thursday it might consider dropping out of the exchanges in 2017, citing flagging enrollment and high costs.
It is difficult to accurately ascertain how much the federal government spends annually on advertising and messaging campaigns because no government-wide definition of advertising exists, and there is no central authority with oversight responsibility over media contracts.
According to a June 2014 Congressional Research Service (CRS) report, the Obama administration spent a minimum of $4.4 billion on outside advertising contracts between fiscal 2009 and fiscal 2013, a figure that did not include in-house expenditures.
HHS was second only to the Department of Defense, spending $197.4 million on advertising in fiscal 2013, CRS reported.
Hatch’s letter is not the first time ObamaCare promotions have raised concern.
In 2012, reports that HHS was spending $20 million on a campaign to promote ObamaCare drew similar scrutiny and demands for details from Congress.
In 2010, the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported the Obama administration spent nearly $20 million on a Medicare brochure that contained “instances in which HHS presented abbreviated information and a positive view of Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) that is not universally shared.”
GAO concluded that “nothing in the brochure constitutes communications that are purely partisan, self-aggrandizing, or covert.”
Another HHS agency has drawn the attention of the Senate Budget Committee after The Washington Post reported the public relations firm Edelman was hired to “refine their agency messaging” with reporters.
“Agency spending on advertising, public relations and media relations is largely a black box,” committee Chairman Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., wrote in an October letter to Office of Management and Budget Director Shaun Donovan seeking details about the firm’s contract with HHS’ Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA).
In its fiscal 2016 budget, SAMSHA asked for $16 million for “public awareness and support.”
Noting the Obama administration consistently asks for Congress to raise the debt limit, Enzi said any “unnecessary media relations spending is a cost that the nation simply cannot afford.”
A committee spokesman said OMB missed its deadline, but noted they are working to provide the requested materials.

Carson says refugee screening must 'determine the mad dogs'

MOBILE, Ala. –  Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson said Thursday that blocking potential terrorists posing as Syrian refugees from entering the U.S. is akin to handling a rabid dog.
At campaign stops in Alabama, Carson said halting Syrian resettlement in the U.S. doesn't mean America lacks compassion.
"If there's a rabid dog running around in your neighborhood, you're probably not going to assume something good about that dog," Carson told reporters at one stop. "It doesn't mean you hate all dogs, but you're putting your intellect into motion."
Carson said that to "protect my children," he would "call the humane society and hopefully they can come take this dog away and create a safe environment once again."
He continued: "By the same token, we have to have in place screening mechanisms that allow us to determine who the mad dogs are, quite frankly. Who are the people who want to come in here and hurt us and want to destroy us?"
He later repeated the comparison at a rally at the University of South Alabama, while telling hundreds of supporters that reporters had misrepresented his earlier remarks. "This is the kind of thing that they do," he said, drawing laughs and applause.
Carson is among the GOP hopefuls who have called for closing the nation's borders to Syrian refugees in the wake of the shooting and bombing attacks in Paris that killed 129 people and wounded hundreds more.
The Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the carnage, stoking fears of future attacks across Europe and in the U.S.
The retired neurosurgeon, who is near the top of many national and early state preference polls, said he's been in touch with House GOP leaders about their efforts to establish new hurdles for Syrian and Iraqi refugees trying to enter the U.S.
Dozens of Democrats joined majority Republicans in the House to pass the measure on Thursday. It would require the FBI to conduct background checks on people coming to the U.S. from those countries. The heads of the FBI and Homeland Security Department and the director of national intelligence would have to certify to Congress that each refugee "is not a threat to the security of the United States."
Asked whether he would sign it, Carson said he hasn't reviewed the details. "If, in fact, it does satisfy basic needs for safety, of course," Carson said.
The Council on American-Islamic relations condemned Carson's dog comparisons at the same time it blasted another GOP hopeful, Donald Trump, for declining to rule out setting up a U.S. government database and special identification cards for Muslims in America.
"Such extremist rhetoric is unbecoming of anyone who seeks our nation's highest office and must be strongly repudiated by leaders from across the political spectrum," said Robert McCaw's, CAIR's government affairs manager.
In Mobile, Carson said, "Islam itself is not necessarily our adversary." But he said Americans are justified in seeing threats from Muslim refugees and the U.S. shouldn't "completely change who we are as Americans just so we can look like good people."
He continued: "We have an American culture, and we have things that we base our values and principles on. I, for one, am not willing to give all those things away just so I can be politically correct."
Separately, Carson said Thursday that Islamic State militants are more organized and sophisticated than the al-Qaida terrorists who carried out the 9/11 attacks.
Those attacks, he said, "really didn't require a great deal of sophistication because we weren't really paying attention."
He added, "You didn't have to be that great. You had to be able to fly a couple of planes. You're going to have to be a lot more sophisticated than that now."
Carson's spoke a few days after some people in and around his campaign offered public concerns about his command of foreign policy. The chief critic, former CIA agent Duane Clarridge, told The New York Times that Carson struggles with Middle Eastern affairs.
He "not an adviser," Carson said, adding that Armstrong Williams, his longtime business manager, also "has nothing to do with my campaign."
Williams spoke to the Times, the Associated Press and other media about Carson's need to improve as a candidate. Carson described Williams as an independent operator who "speaks for himself."
But, Carson acknowledged, Williams as recently as this week helped the candidate edit a foreign policy op-ed the campaign sent to The Washington Post.

NBC executive says she didn’t mean to offend Latino lawmakers: ‘Yo hablo español’

If Latino lawmakers thought they were going to walk out of a meeting with NBC executives feeling assured that the media company was turning a new leaf following protests over Donald Trump's appearance on "Saturday Night Live," they were sorely mistaken.
Things turned tense almost immediately when NBC News President Deborah Turness began talking about undocumented immigrants and referred to them as "illegals" – a term that is not only considered offensive to many Latinos but one that has also fallen out of favor in many parts of the country.
According to a story by Politico, Turness was telling Hispanic members of the House about NBC's integration with their Spanish-language network, Telemundo, which included a story about Pope Francis' visit to the U.S. and his meeting with a young girl who was afraid her parents would be deported because they're "illegals."
"I'm going to stop you right there. We use the term undocumented immigrants," California Democratic, Rep. Juan Vargas (D-Calif.) told Turness, who apologized for the remark.
Later, she tried to assure the lawmakers that the network understood the community and its concerns.
"We love the Hispanic community,” she said. “Yo hablo español."
The meeting was already expected to be tense given the strong backlash from Latino leaders and activist groups after the announcement that Trump would host SNL.
The furor against Trump began in June when he announced his Republican candidacy for president and described some Mexicans who are in the United States illegally as criminals and rapists.
Hours before his appearance on the show's earlier in November, dozens of protesters marched from Trump Tower to NBC's studio in Rockefeller Plaza, carrying signs and chanting in both English and Spanish. In Spanish, they chanted: "The people united shall never be defeated." Signs called the show racist.
Trump's comments last summer did spur NBC to sever its Miss Universe ties with him while declaring he would never return to his "Apprentice" role. But leading up to his appearance, NBC did not respond to accusations that it had reversed itself because they invited him to host the show.
The meeting between Latino leaders and NBC was expected to ease the animosity that the network has generated from the Trump fiasco, but Turness appeared to do more harm than good with her comments during the sit-down.
Lawmakers left irate at Turness and her fellow NBC executives.
The NBC officials gathered at the meeting also told the lawmakers that they could not discuss Trump's SNL appearance because they represented the news side of NBC, prompting the lawmakers to question why the network didn't make more of an effort to include someone from the entertainment side.
"There was a lot of frustration in the room," said California Democratic Rep. Tony Cárdenas (D-Calif.). "You know that (Trump is) an issue on all of our minds and as soon as you start talking about it, you say none of the executives for the entertainment (division) are here. It was a cop out. It was disingenuous."
The meeting "was about them sitting down with the Hispanic caucus for the sake of saying they met with us," Cárdenas added. "Like that is progress."
While little progress was made toward resolving the anger over Trump's "SNL" appearance, NBC News did make some steps to toward promoting diversity in the newsroom – including adding more Hispanic correspondents to "NBC Nightly News." The company also said Jose Diaz-Balart, an MSNBC and Telemundo host, will officially become a rotating anchor on the Saturday edition of "Nightly News" and will be a regular contributor to "Meet the Press."
Yet, the lawmakers did not leave satisfied.
"Members left more offended and more upset then when they walked in there. There was major 'Hispandering,'" said a Democratic staffer. "There is definitely hurt there."

France PM says Paris attacks ringleader used migrant crisis to get into country

France’s Prime Minister Manuel Valls said Friday some of the Paris attackers, including the mastermind Abdelhamid Abaaoud, exploited the Syrian refugee crisis to slip into the country unnoticed.
Abaaoud, the ringleader behind last Friday’s bombings and shootings in the French capital that killed 129 people, was able to get into Europe undeterred, according to French authorities. The 28-year-old had also been linked to several plots around France including a thwarted attack by a gunman on a high-speed train in August.
French officials confirmed Thursday Abaaoud was killed in an anti-terror raid Wednesday in a suburb north of Paris. He was identified from skin samples after the Saint-Denis apartment raid.
Abaaoud had claimed he successfully moved back and forth from Europe to Syria coordinating terror attacks, and narrowly escaped a January police raid in the Belgian city of Verviers. “Allah blinded their vision and I was able to leave... despite being chased after by so many intelligence agencies," he told the ISIS magazine Dabiq.
Two counterterrorism officials told Fox News on Thursday that Abaaoud is comparable to Mohammed Atta – the “tactical guy” who identified and pulled together the operatives.
Police say they launched Wednesday's operation after receiving information from tapped phone calls, surveillance and tipoffs suggesting that Abaaoud was holed up in the apartment. Investigators said it was still unclear how he died. Eight other people were arrested.
French authorities did not know he was in Europe before the massacre, France's interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve said Thursday. He demanded Europe do everything in its power to "vanquish terrorism."
Valls said some of the Paris attackers had taken advantage of the massive influx of migrants into Europe fleeing war in the Middle East.
"These individuals took advantage of the refugee crisis ... of the chaos, perhaps, for some of them to slip in" to France, he told French TV. "Others were in Belgium already. And others, I must remind you, were in France."
Valls also warned that the passport-free Schengen zone is a risk of Europe fails to “take responsibility” over border controls, according to Sky News. European Union ministers are expected to meet in Brussels where they are expected to tighten border security in each of the 26-member nations.
Hasna Aitboulahcen, described as Abaaoud’s cousin, was also killed in the anti-terror raid Wednesday when she activated a suicide belt and blew herself up.
Police now turn their attention to two other suspects who are believed to have participated in the attacks. Police have identified one of them as Salah Abdeslam, who grew up in the same Belgian district as Abaaoud, the Brussels suburb of Molenbeek.
There was no indication Abdeslam escaped to neighboring Spain or tried to do so, Spanish Interior Miniister Jorge Fernandez Diaz said. He told Antena 3 television that security officials from several countries were called together in Paris to discuss the possibility that Abdeslam might try to cross into a country bordering France.
Spanish police say French authorities sent a bulletin to officers across Europe asking them to watch out for a Citroen Xsara car that could be carrying Abdeslam.
Abaaoud's death may provide some relief not only for Europeans, but also for his own family. “We are praying that Abdelhamid really is dead,” his sister, Yasmina, said last year, The New York Times reported. At the time, there was word he died fighting for ISIS, but it eventually emerged that he escaped Syria for Europe.
His own father, Omar, said the jihadi "dishonored" his family, the Times added.