Fact check: Claims 'no refugees' since 9/11 took part in terror plots ring false

After the deadly terrorist attacks in Paris last week, many news sources claimed that not a single refugee had been charged with terrorism in the U.S. since the attacks on 9/11, but the assertion does not stand up to scrutiny.
The noted publication The Economist proclaimed: “750,000 refugees have been resettled in America since 9/11; Not one has been arrested on domestic terrorism charges.”
In fact, several refugees have been convicted in high-profile terrorism plots, and several more were “asylees” -- people allowed to stay in the U.S. for the same reasons as refugees, but who do not go through the same screening process. In one case, two Iraqi refugees in Kentucky were convicted after it turned out they had used IEDs to attack U.S. soldiers in Iraq and were plotting other attacks. An FBI agent recalled that they bragged about that and said they had soldiers “for lunch and dinner… meaning that he had killed them,” ABC News reported an FBI official as saying in 2013.

" ... it only takes a handful of ISIS infiltrators hiding among them to bring the carnage we saw in Paris to our streets.”
- Marc Thiessen, American Enterprise Institue

A Department of Justice report noted that one of those refugees, Waad Ramadan Alwan, left fingerprints on unexploded IEDs in Iraq and that he was sentenced to 40 years in prison after he “pleaded guilty to conspiring to kill U.S. nationals abroad; conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction (explosives) against U.S. nationals abroad; distributing information on the manufacture and use of IEDs; attempting to provide material support to terrorists and to [Al Qaeda in Iraq] and conspiring to transfer, possess and export Stinger missiles.”
His conspirator, Mohanad Shareef Hammadi, was also let in through the refugee program and is now serving a life sentence.

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Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, left, and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, carried out the oston Marathon bombings, though at trial, Dzhokhar claimed his older brother was mainly responsible. (AP)

Since that incident, government officials say they have tightened procedures for refugees and that people like those two would no longer get in. But officials have also said that while the U.S. has an extensive database of Iraqis and their histories, built up over years of occupying the country, similar information does not exist for Syrians, some 10,000 of whom could be coming to the U.S. under a White House proposal.
“If we don’t know much about somebody, there won’t be anything in our data,” FBI Director James Comey said in congressional testimony in October, adding, “I can’t sit here and offer anybody an absolute assurance that there’s no risk associated with this.”
In another recent case, an Uzbek refugee in Idaho was found guilty of conspiracy and attempting to support a terrorist organization, after he had allegedly been stockpiling explosives. His sentencing is scheduled for January.

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Mohanad Shareef Hammadi, (l.), and Waad Ramadan Alwan, (r.), entered the U.S. as Iraqi refugees after helping build IEDs used against American forces in Iraq.

A State Department spokesperson told FoxNews.com that “Of the three million refugees we have admitted to the United States since 1975, including nearly 785,000 refugees admitted to the U.S. since the events of 9/11, approximately a dozen -- a tiny fraction of one percent -- have either been arrested or removed from the United States due to security concerns that existed prior to their resettlement in the U.S."
The statement added: “While no immigration program is completely without risk, the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program is focused on upholding the national security of the United States.”
Supporters of letting more refugees in say that U.S. should not let the occasional danger get in the way of helping thousands.
“It’s a fairly small threat, and the benefits greatly outweigh it,” CATO immigration analyst Alex Nowrasteh told FoxNews.com, pointing to the results of past refugee flows.
“Every refugee flow in the past has been criticized and they turn out to be fine -- and a benefit in terms of economic growth and their contribution to the economy,” he said, adding that most refugees also have critical Arabic language skills and a dislike of ISIS that might prove a national security asset for future involvement in the Middle East.
But some terrorism experts say Americans should be very worried about taking more refugees.
“There are serious security concerns.The vast majority of Syrian refugees are legitimate victims of terror and persecution, but it only takes a handful of ISIS infiltrators hiding among them to bring the carnage we saw in Paris to our streets,” Marc Thiessen, American Enterprise Institute fellow and former senior policy adviser to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman, told FoxNews.com.
“Moreover, polls show that while the vast majority of refugees oppose ISIS, about 13 percent support the terror network,” Thiessen noted.
Other high-profile terrorists entered the U.S. first and then applied for asylum, which can be granted to people who “meet the definition of refugee,” according to the government’s U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
That includes the Boston marathon bombers, who came from Chechnya and were granted asylum in the U.S. before killing three and injuring more than 250 people.
Members of the “Fort Dix 6,” who were convicted of conspiracy to murder U.S. military personnel, also entered seeking asylum; they were never granted it, but were never removed from the country, either.
Despite those cases, government officials caution that the vast majority of refugees are in need of help and don’t pose a risk.
But Thiessen said that while it is important to help desperate Syrian refugees -- for instance by creating “safe zones” in the Middle East -- the refugee program is not the best way to help.
“We need to help these people, but admitting them into the U.S. is not the best way to do it,” he said.

Liz Mair, Republican National Committee Cartoon

University suspends yoga class, citing 'cultural issues' that may offend students

Jennifer Scharf

A yoga instructor who teaches at the University of Ottawa says she is fighting to keep her program alive after the school’s student body suspended it over concerns that “cultural issues” relating to the class could offend students.
Jennifer Scharf, who has been offering free weekly sessions at the university’s Center for Students with Disabilities since 2008, told the Ottawa Sun that she was informed in September that the program would not come back for the fall semester.
In an email exchange between Scharf and a representative of the university’s Student Federation -- which was viewed by the newspaper -- a student wrote that “while yoga is a really great idea and accessible and great for students... there are cultural issues of implication involved in the practice.
"Yoga has been under a lot of controversy lately due to how it is being practiced," the email continues, and which cultures those practices "are being taken from."
The Student Federation, which operates the center, went on to say that many of those cultures “have experienced oppression, cultural genocide and diasporas due to colonialism and Western supremacy... we need to be mindful of this and how we express ourselves while practicing yoga."
Student Federation Acting President Romeo Ahimakin told the Ottawa Sun that the class has been put on hold until a way can be figured out "to make it better, more accessible and more inclusive to certain groups of people that feel left out in yoga-like spaces.
“We are trying to have those sessions done in a way in which students are aware of where the spiritual and cultural aspects come from, so that these sessions are done in a respectful manner,” he added.
But Scharf, who instructed about 60 students each week in the program, said, "people are just looking for a reason to be offended by anything they can find."
Scharf says she offered the student body leaders a compromise by suggesting she change the name of the course to “mindful stretching,” but after some debate, they couldn’t reach an agreement.
"I guess it was this cultural appropriation issue because yoga originally comes from India," she told CBC News. "We're not going through the finer points of Scripture. We're talking about basic physical awareness and how to stretch so that you feel good.”
Scharf added that she is “fighting so hard” to keep the class.

Grassley steps up Clinton email probe, blocks key nominees

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley is putting a hold on top State Department appointments -- including the nominee for the department's fourth-highest post -- until he gets the answers he's seeking from a former top aide of Hillary Clinton tasked with helping determine which of the former secretary of state's emails should be made public.
The Iowa Republican -- who also is investigating the special employment status afforded to Clinton confidant Huma Abedin while at State -- has slammed the department for its "continued intransigence and lack of cooperation" throughout the inquiry, which dates back to June 2013. Critics, including Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid, have derided the probe as a politically motivated bid to undermine the Democratic presidential candidate's campaign for the White House.
For its part, the State Department says it has responded to Grassley's questions "in 16 formal letters and many briefings, calls and emails," but remains overwhelmed by the volume of requests.
Grassley, who last week released holds on 20 career Foreign Service Officers, is now turning to bigger fish in a bid for leverage to get more cooperation from the department.
He is blocking the nomination of Thomas Shannon to replace Wendy Sherman as under secretary for political affairs, the No. 4 post in the department. In addition, his office told Fox News he has placed holds on the nominations of Brian James Egan for legal adviser and David Malcolm Robinson for assistant secretary for conflict and stabilization operations and coordinator for reconstruction and stabilization.
A hold is procedural tactic senators often employ to extract information or other concessions from the administration. President Obama himself made use of holds as a senator from Illinois, blocking nominations to the EPA during the Bush administration over objections to lead paint regulations.
Grassley’s holds came as he fired off a letter to former Clinton aide Heather Samuelson, posing 19 questions about the process used to screen the emails for the former secretary of state.
He also asked Samuelson what kind of security clearance she had at the time, given that hundreds of Clinton's emails have been shown to contain classified information.
"Given the importance of securing and protecting classified information ... it is imperative to confirm when, how, and why you, and any of your associates, received a security clearance in connection with your work on behalf of Secretary Clinton and whether it was active while you had custody of Secretary Clinton’s emails," Grassley wrote in the letter, first reported by Politico.
"Further, it is imperative to understand your background in determining what is and what is not a federal record, since you apparently played a major role in assisting Secretary Clinton in making a decision as to which emails to delete."
Clinton has come under heavy fire for routing official emails through a personal server during her time as secretary of state. The Democratic front-runner's aides have also faced scrutiny for their roles in determining which messages to turn back over to the agency, which has been slowly making them public under a court order.
Critics have accused Clinton of putting sensitive government information at risk under the arrangement. Separately, the FBI has been investigating whether the setup resulted in the mishandling of classified information.
The State Department insisted it is trying to work with Grassley’s office.
"Over the course of the last several months, the mounting requests from the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee have contained nearly 200 detailed questions and 65 unique document requests," department spokesman Alec Gerlach said in a statement. "The department is committed to working with the committee and providing responses as quickly as possible, but the growing effort needed to accommodate these requests is overwhelming the resources we have available."
A Grassley spokeswoman described the level of cooperation as “sparse.”
Senate Democrats have urged Grassley to drop his objections.
"The senior Senator from Iowa comes to the floor and talks about the proper use of taxpayer resources," Reid, the Democratic leader, said earlier this month. "He should walk into his bathroom and look into the mirror and find out what he’s doing about the proper use of taxpayer resources. He should be willing to tell us about the resources his committee is spending to investigate Secretary Clinton."

Republican donors, operative fueling new anti-Trump ad blitz

Liz Mair, former communications official for the Republican National Committee

Republican donors with links to several presidential candidates – as well as a prominent GOP operative – are pooling their resources in a new effort to go after Donald Trump and keep the party’s presidential front-runner from winning the nomination.
The most recent bid is a reported “guerrilla campaign” led by a group called Trump Card LLC and run by Liz Mair, former communications official for the Republican National Committee.
The group’s goal, according to The Wall Street Journal, is to collect money from anonymous donors to “defeat and destroy” Trump, who has essentially led the GOP presidential field since declaring his candidacy this summer.
Further, the super PAC supporting fellow GOP candidate and Ohio Gov. John Kasich is planning to air attack ads against Trump in New Hampshire. And, in a sign of the project’s appeal among donors, it is starting to get funding from donors backing candidates other than Kasich.
Fox News has learned that, as of Sunday, 10 new donors pledged money to the group, New Day for America, since a report Thursday on the super PAC’s plans.
The group confirmed most of those donors are supporting other candidates, including former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio. Among them, California donor Jeffrey Le Sage told Reuters, which first reported on the new donations, that he wants to help “stand up to Donald Trump.”
Le Sage, a Bush donor, confirmed to Fox News that he donated to the pro-Kasich group.
Some in the so-called Republican establishment and GOP “donor class” fear the party will lose the general election if Trump wins the nomination, arguing his comments and views are alienating Hispanic and black voters.
The relationship between old guard Republicans and Trump, the billionaire, first-time candidate, has been rocky from the start.
Trump’s laments about being treated unfairly by the Republican National Committee and his threats to mount an independent candidacy eventually led him to sign a pledge stating he wouldn’t run as an independent and would support the nominee if he lost.
However, after news broke about the concerted effort to undermine him, Trump hinted he might consider breaking away.
“We'll see what happens,” he said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.” “I have to be treated fairly. … If I’m treated fairly, I’m fine.”
The anti-Trump effort comes as he continues to dominate the polls. The latest Fox News poll showed him with a record 28 percent support from primary voters.
In addition to the pro-Kasich and Trump Card groups, the super PAC associated with the fiscal conservative Club for Growth is trying to raise money to resume anti-Trump ads, after running a reported $1 million worth earlier this year in Iowa.
Trump Card, which would not have to disclose donors, wants $250,000 from the other GOP presidential campaigns to run anti-Trump TV, radio and web ads and to pitch opposition research to local stations in early-voting states.
Mair, who also used to work for the Scott Walker presidential campaign, wrote, “In the absence of our efforts, Trump is exceedingly unlikely to implode or be forced out of the race,” according to a memo obtained by The Journal.
“The stark reality is that unless something dramatic and unconventional is done, Trump will be the Republican nominee and Hillary Clinton will become president,” Mair continued.
Trump has threated to sue New Day for America and reportedly said through a spokesman that Mair “worked for Scott Walker and lost her job -- who can blame her?”

Officials investigate whether Paris terror fugitive abandoned mission

The discovery of a suicide vest in a Paris suburb Monday has heightened the possibility that Europe's most wanted man, Salah Abdeslam, abandoned his murderous mission to cause terror in the French capital before fleeing across the border into Belgium.
The vest was found by a street cleaner in a pile of rubble in Chatillon-Montrouge, on the southern edge of Paris and a considerable distance from the sites of the attacks on the Right Bank of the Seine to the north. However, authorities say data from Abdeslam's cell phone placed him in the Chatillon-Montrouge area on the night of the Nov. 13 attacks, which killed 130 people and injured 350 others.
A police official told the Associated Press that the vest contained bolts and the same type of explosives — TATP — as those used by the ISIS attackers. A police source also told Sky News the vest had "the same configuration" as those found with the seven confirmed assailants.
In addition, the theory that Abdeslam originally planned to join the seven other terrorists would match the claim by ISIS that eight people carried out the attacks, not the seven confirmed by the French authorities. The terror group's statement of responsibility also said that simultaneous attacks were carried out in the 10th, 11th and 18th arrondissements, or districts, of the city. In fact, the assaults on sidewalk cafes and the Bataclan concert hall only took place in the 10th and 11th districts, while no attack in the 18th took place.
What remains unclear to investigators is why Abdeslam apparently ditched his mission before leaving France. One theory, advanced by Abdeslam's brother Mohamed, suggests that the would-be bomber simply had second thoughts about his mission at the last moment. Another theory, held by some authorities, holds that Abdeslam abandoned the vest due to a technical problem.

More on this...

• Terror threat paralyzes Brussels

• Belgian authorities on the hunt for Paris attack suspect

Abdeslam is suspected of playing at least a logistical role in the coordinated shooting and suicide bombings on the night of Nov. 13. He has not been seen since a few hours after the attacks, when he managed to cross into his native Belgium in a car with two friends, both of whom have since been arrested.
Salah Abdeslam's brother, Brahim, blew himself up near the Bataclan concert hall during the attacks, injuring 15 other people.
As authorities hunted Abdeslam Tuesday, Brussels entered the fourth day of its lockdown, which closed the city's schools and subway system. Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel said Monday that despite the continued high-alert level, schools would reopen Wednesday, with parts of the subway system beginning to operate. He did not say when the system would be completely online again.
"We are very alert and call for caution," Michel said. "The potential targets remain the same: shopping centers and shopping streets and public transport."
"We want to return to a normal way of life as quickly as possible," he added.
Belgian authorities have not announced any details of their investigation into potential attacks nor have they released information about four suspects who have been arrested and charged with terrorism-related offenses. These include one suspect who was arrested as part of a sweep that saw 21 people detained since Sunday night. Fifteen of those detainees have since been released.
Also Tuesday, the only person in France facing potential terrorism charges linked to the Nov. 13 attacks was brought before a judge to be either charged or released.
Jawad Bendaoud was taken into custody Nov. 18 moments after giving a television interview in which he acknowledged he had given shelter to two people from Belgium and said he didn't know who they were or what they planned. Among those killed in the apartment raid were Amdelhamid Abaaoud, the suspected mastermind, a female cousin and an unidentified man.
  In the interview, Bendaoud, 29, told BFM television "I didn't know they were terrorists. I was asked to do a favor, I did a favor, sir."

College Cry baby Cartoon

Down with Wilson, up with Che: Wimpy colleges surrender to lunatic fringe

In a month when Western Civilization has come under renewed attack from jihadists, that other bastion of opposition to the economic and political freedom the West embodies has gone haywire: college campuses.  While it’s tempting to blame precious students who are demanding safe zones and freedom from unwelcome ideas, the real culprits are wimpy college administrators.
The latest chapter of political-correctness lunacy comes from Princeton’s campus, where a group of students staged an illegal sit-in at the offices of university president Eisgruber.  The students were outraged that the man who ran Princeton before becoming our 28^th president in 1913, Woodrow Wilson, was unable to see a century into the future during his life and comply with our contemporary racial sensibilities.  Despite a tenure that made him commander-in-chief during World War I and which fundamentally changed America’s role in the world, aggrieved students now demand safety from buildings and murals bearing Wilson’s name.
Princeton’s Black Justice League also wants a space on campus for “cultural affinity” groups and and a diversity and “cultural competency” training program.(Incidentally, China had a nationwide version of this beginning in 1966.)
Rather than having the trespassing students arrested and expelled, Eisgruber validated their tactics, signing an agreement that could lead to airbrushing Wilson, and which provided amnesty for the law-breaking students.
This is par for course in a year when college administrators have caved in to a loud minority of perpetually aggrieved students.  In the past month, kids at Yale made headlines for demanding administrators make them safe from potentially insensitive Halloween costumes and an email that dared suggest independent thought.  Instead of standing up for free expression and telling students to buck up, Yale’s president, Peter Salovey, gushed to protesters: “We failed you.  I think we have to be a better university. I think we have to do a better job.”
At the University of Missouri, students protested a lack of handholding after alleged racial incidents.  Ultimately, the school’s president was forced out.  In each of these cases, administrators indulged out-of-line students who should have been rebuked.
Administrators aren’t just kowtowing to fringe students in assaulting free speech and political rights, they’re also attacking economic freedom.  A case in point is the University of California at San Diego, which hosts a Marxist collective that can’t pay its bills.
The Che Cafe—named after communist Che Guevara--has graced its location on Scholars Drive at UCSD since 1980, when the self-styled “collective” began operating the music venue.  Its web site promises that, “Working in our co-op/workers’ collective, and learning to cooperate with others in a non-hierarchical setting can be a very valuable experience.”
Other helpful advice includes: “If you do not wish to be shoved by the mosh, do not stand in or next to the mosh.”  Words to live by.
But what about that mosh known as the real world, for which college is supposed to prepare students?  It can be tough out there, with things like laws and bills.  The Che has been brought to the brink of ruin not only by its pay-whatever’s-cool revenue model—a unique idea they oddly never taught us in business school—but also by a demand that it comply with health and fire regulations, including by installing costly sprinklers and alarms that do nothing at all for the radical-chic vibe.
The Che would very much like to keep bumming subsidies from UCSD—effectively seeking a bailout of about $700,000 from taxpayer funds and tuition.  In a moment of sanity, UCSD moved to evict the collective.  In true California style, the matter is now tied up in court.
Don’t blame PC-crazed kids.  It was actually a student-run committee that voted to cut funding for the Che. One of many reasons was a survey that revealed 83% of UCSD students never go to the place.
Nonetheless, even before a ruling from the court, UCSD has indicated it will back down.  In so doing, administrators would join the morally challenged presidents of Yale and Princeton.
At all of these colleges, PC thugs represent just a tiny minority; the vast majority of American students want to use college as a foundation for success and a good life, not a career of indulging grievances.  The real culprits are weak administrators who, rather than pander to the bottom 5% of future alumni, ought to stand up for the political and economic freedom that made America great—and which are crucial to critical reasoning and the attainment of knowledge.
No one expects students not to do stupid things on occasion, like hanging out at a collective or thinking they’re oppressed by a building named by someone who wasn’t culturally sensitive by standards a century after his death.  But it’s time for college administrators to start reflecting the values and judgment of parents and taxpayers who foot the bill for college—and for that matter the silent majority of students who want to learn to succeed in the great nation that pioneered political and economic freedom.