RUTHFULLY YOURS

A few Republican senators are making an important point.

Ten Republican Senators sent a letter to members of the Biden administration this week demanding an explanation for a rule change that will allow some individuals who have materially supported terrorist organizations to immigrate to the U.S.

“We write because the American people deserve an explanation regarding the broad, open-ended nature of this authority for exempting individuals who would otherwise be barred from immigration to the United States for supporting a terrorist organization,” Sen. Bill Hagerty (Tenn.) and his colleagues wrote in the letter addressed to Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas and Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

The point that they make in their letter is that Biden not only provided a waiver for terrorists, but made it as open-ended as possible.

The June 8 determination by the Departments of Homeland Security and State announced that people who have provided “insignificant” or “limited” material support to terrorist organizations in the past will no longer be barred from immigration.

Biden justified this by claiming that it was there for the Afghans, but, as bad as that is, it isn’t limited to them.

For example, in 2019, this authority was applied to visa or other immigration-related applications for an activity or association relating to the Lebanese Forces militias (“2019 Determination”). The 2019 Determination is narrowly tailored and does not apply outside the context of the Lebanese civil war that occurred between 1975 and 1990. It also clearly states that it does not apply to any alien that engaged in terrorist activity or knowingly provided any level of material support to terrorist activities that targeted noncombatants or U.S. interests…

In contrast, your June 8 Determination widely exempts persons who provided “insignificant material support” or “limited material support under circumstances” to a designated terrorist organization. According to a DHS press release, the intent of this determination is to help “vulnerable Afghans.” Yet, the June 8 Determination makes no mention of Afghanistan or Afghan refugees and is not limited to the categories of Afghan individuals described in your press release or persons connected with the war in Afghanistan. Indeed, it is not limited to certain conflicts, terrorist organizations, geographic regions, or time periods at all.

In contrast, on the same day that you issued the June 8 Determination, you issued a separate determination that was specifically limited to individuals who were employed as civil servants in Afghanistan during a specific time frame…

Instead, the June 8 Determination broadly permits the admission of foreign individuals who provided material support to terrorist organizations that the Biden Administration deems insignificant or limited. This could include, for example, current or former members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and IRGC-linked entities, which are responsible for the deaths of hundreds of U.S. service members in Iraq and Afghanistan. It could include individuals seeking asylum at the southern border.

Bringing in the IRGC was the focus of a significant pressure campaign that appeared in pro-terror outlets like the Washington Post. But overall there’s every reason to assume that Biden’s people used the Afghans are a pretext to pry open the door to terrorists as widely as possible. The Senate letter demonstrates that there were plenty of options for a narrow framework, instead they made it possible to whitewash and import as many terrorists from around the world as they can. That’s not an accident, it’s the plan.