U.S. intelligence officials have determined that Islamic State terrorists have tried to use the flow of hundreds of thousands of refugees from Syria to infiltrate into the United States, a leading House Republican said Monday.
House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul made the revelation, which he said came from a briefing this week, in a speech in which he called for immediate changes in the U.S. effort against the extremist group before it succeeds in launching another deadly attack on the homeland.
“I can reveal today that the United States government has information to indicate that individualts tied to terrorist groups in Syria have already attempted to gain access to our country through the U.S. refugee program,” he said. “That was very courageous for them to come forward with this to tell me about this personally given the political debate on the Hill with the Syrian refugee bill.”
McCaul also said President Obama has “doubled-down on a strategy of hesitancy and half-measures” against the group.
“For far too long, we have allowed extremists to reclaim their momentum, surging from terrorist cells into full-fledged terrorist armies. As a result, I believe the state of our homeland is increasingly not secure, and I believe 2015 will be seen as a watershed year in this long war — the year when our enemies gained an upper hand and when the spread of terror once again awoke the West,” the Texas Republican said in a speech at the National Defense University.
“I’ve had enough. We cannot be blind to the threat before us. ISIS is not contained. It is expanding at great cost to the free world,” he said. “America cannot adopt a wait-and-see approach while the world burns and while terrorists plot within our borders.”
McCaul called on the administration to loosen the rules of engagement that have limited the aerial bombardment and the use of U.S. troops against the Islamic State, establish a safe haven for civilians in Syria and broaden the anti-Islamic State coalition to include NATO and forces from Sunni Arab allies.
His speech, timed for the anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack, is the latest expression of Republican frustration at Obama’s approach to fighting the extremists, which was most recently evident Sunday night in a televised speech from the White House. Intended to reassure nervous Americans after a deadly attack last week by Islamic State supporters in San Bernadino, Calif., the president focused on promoting new gun control initiatives and called on Americans to respect their Muslim compatriots.
The only new initiative in Obama’s speech, an effort to add new restrictions on the visa waiver program for citizens of certain countries, already has been written into legislation and is set for a vote in Congress this week.
McCaul said that legislation, which follows another call for a tighter vetting process for Syrian refugees, is just the beginning. He said bills will follow further enhancements to the security of the visa process, tightened airport security and streamlining the Department of Homeland Security into a more focused counterterrorism agency.
He also called for the creation of a national commission on security and technology challenges in the digital age, to examine concerns about terrorists using state-of-the-art encryption techniques to conceal their communications from law enforcement and spy agencies.
“This is one of the greatest counterterrorism challenges of the 21st century,” he said. “It is one of the biggest fears that keeps me up at night.”
