Could a Terrorist Infiltrate the Syrian Refugee Program?

If you look solely at Amer­ica’s long re­cord of tak­ing in refugees from coun­tries torn apart by war, it’s hard to ar­gue that na­tion­al se­cur­ity should be a top con­cern in the de­bate over Syr­i­an mi­grants.

In the 14 years since Septem­ber 11, 2001, the United States has re­settled 784,000 refugees from around the world, ac­cord­ing to data from the Cen­ter for Mi­gra­tion Stud­ies, a D.C. think tank. And with­in that pop­u­la­tion, three people have been ar­res­ted for activ­it­ies re­lated to ter­ror­ism. None of them were close to ex­ecut­ing an at­tack in­side the United States, and two of the men were caught try­ing to leave the coun­try to join ter­ror­ist groups over­seas.

“I think I can count on one hand the num­ber of crimes of any sig­ni­fic­ance that I’ve heard have been com­mit­ted by refugees,” said Lavin­ia Limón, a vet­er­an of refugee work since 1975 and the pres­id­ent of the U.S. Com­mit­tee for Refugees and Im­mig­rants. “It just hasn’t been an is­sue.”

If you look solely at Amer­ica’s long re­cord of tak­ing in refugees from coun­tries torn apart by war, it’s hard to ar­gue that na­tion­al se­cur­ity should be a top con­cern in the de­bate over Syr­i­an mi­grants.

The second reas­on is that since the pro­gram was briefly hal­ted and then over­hauled after the 9/11 at­tacks, refugee ap­plic­ants are sub­ject to the highest level of se­cur­ity checks of any type of trav­el­er to the United States. The United Na­tions High Com­mis­sion­er for Refugees ini­tially chooses which refugees to refer to the United States after do­ing its own check. Amer­ic­an of­fi­cials then con­duct mul­tiple in-per­son in­ter­views and veri­fy a refugee’s story with in­tel­li­gence agen­cies and run back­ground checks through sev­er­al gov­ern­ment data­bases, in­clud­ing the Home­land Se­cur­ity De­part­ment and the Na­tion­al Coun­terter­ror­ism Cen­ter. As a res­ult of that ex­tens­ive pro­cess, only around 2,000 Syr­i­an refugees have been re­settled in the United States since its civil war broke out in 2011—a much lower num­ber than many pre­vi­ous refugee crises. The Obama ad­min­is­tra­tion wants to ac­cept at least 10,000 more in 2016, but even that might be too much for the bur­eau­cracy to handle. Once re­settled, refugees get hous­ing and mon­et­ary as­sist­ance for sev­er­al months. After a year, they can ap­ply for a green card, at which point they un­der­go an­oth­er se­cur­ity screen­ing.

More than half of the na­tion’s gov­ernors—mostly Re­pub­lic­ans—are now ur­ging the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment to keep Syr­i­an refugees out of their states. But they prob­ably don’t have the fi­nal say. Courts have ruled that im­mig­ra­tion policy is al­most en­tirely a fed­er­al mat­ter, and while the Obama ad­min­is­tra­tion says it must “con­sult” with states as part of the refugee pro­gram, the states can’t re­ject im­mig­rants en­tirely. Yet as a prac­tic­al mat­ter, be­cause the be­ne­fits that refugees re­ceive are ad­min­istered at the state level, the gov­ern­ment might be un­likely to send them to states where they won’t be wel­come.

A cent­ral ques­tion that Re­pub­lic­ans have raised is wheth­er the United States has good enough in­tel­li­gence and data from Syr­ia to de­term­ine if a refugee might pose a threat. How ex­tens­ive is their data­base? How easy would it be for an ap­plic­ant to use forged or stolen doc­u­ments to get in­to the United States? Crit­ics of the refugee policy have gained am­muni­tion from FBI Dir­ect­or James Comey, who ac­know­ledged while testi­fy­ing be­fore Con­gress in Oc­to­ber that there were “cer­tain gaps … in the data avail­able to us.” He de­clined to de­tail those con­cerns in an open hear­ing, say­ing he did not want to provide a roadmap for ter­ror­ists. “There is risk as­so­ci­ated with bring­ing any­body in from the out­side—but es­pe­cially from a con­flict zone like that,” Comey said.

Re­pub­lic­an gov­ernors and con­gres­sion­al lead­ers (along with a few Demo­crats) have seized on those re­marks in call­ing for “a pause” in the Syr­i­an refugee pro­gram so it can un­der­go an­oth­er re­view, and the House could pass le­gis­la­tion to that ef­fect in the next few days. Refugee ad­voc­ates, however, say there is little cause for con­cern. “I just don’t find that ar­gu­ment plaus­ible,” New­land told me. She said the United States might have less data on Syr­ia than on Ir­aq and Afgh­anistan, where the mil­it­ary has had a pres­ence for more than a dec­ade. “But I don’t think there’s less in­form­a­tion than there would be any oth­er refugee pop­u­la­tion,” New­land said. She ad­ded that com­ing from a po­lice state that likes to keep track of its people, refugees from “a well-or­gan­ized so­ci­ety” like Syr­ia would be more likely to have doc­u­ment­a­tion than those flee­ing from im­pov­er­ished coun­tries where cit­izens are un­likely to have gov­ern­ment-is­sued birth cer­ti­fic­ates or pass­ports.

Steven Ca­marota, the dir­ect­or of re­search at the right-lean­ing Cen­ter for Im­mig­ra­tion Stud­ies, said the key dif­fer­ence between Syr­ia and most oth­er sites of re­cent hu­man­it­ari­an crises is the heavy in­flu­ence of a group de­voted to the de­struc­tion of the United States and of West­ern so­ci­ety. He also dis­puted the blem­ish-free his­tory that ad­voc­ates of the refugee pro­gram have clung to, cit­ing Somali im­mig­rants in Min­nesota who have left the coun­try to join IS­IS and the case of the Bo­ston Mara­thon bombers, who ar­rived as chil­dren after be­ing gran­ted asylum. Yet the pro­cess for re­ceiv­ing asylum status is not as strin­gent as for those ap­ply­ing for refugee re­set­tle­ment, and those cases all in­volved people rad­ic­al­ized while they were liv­ing in the United States. “The point here is,” Ca­marota said, “is it worth the risk?”

Im­mig­ra­tion of any kind has caused ten­sion and, in many cases, out­right hos­til­ity throughout U.S. his­tory, and refugee crises are no ex­cep­tion. In a 1939 poll re­cir­cu­lated widely on Tues­day, more than three out of five Amer­ic­ans op­posed the re­set­tle­ment of 10,000 Jew­ish refugees flee­ing Nazi Ger­many. Of­ten­times, the con­cerns have been eco­nom­ic. In the late 1970s, New­land said, fish­er­men in Cali­for­nia feared com­pet­i­tion from Vi­et­namese refugees who would be will­ing to work longer hours for lower pay than they did. And states and cit­ies have oc­ca­sion­ally asked the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment to steer refugees else­where if they didn’t think they’d be able to find jobs in their com­munit­ies. But the ter­ror­ism-fueled fears that have promp­ted a rush of op­pos­i­tion to Syr­i­an re­set­tle­ment is something else. “In my ex­per­i­ence,” New­land said, “this is unique.”