White House Affirms Syrian Refugee Plan Despite Paris Attacks
|
Version 0 of 1. WASHINGTON — As Republicans call for blocking Syrian refugees from coming to the United States in the wake of the attacks in Paris, the Obama administration said on Tuesday that it was confident that it could weed out any migrants posing a terrorism threat before they entered the country. The administration’s plan to bring about 10,000 Syrian refugees to the United States next year has become a highly charged political issue, pitting concerns about national security against efforts to help people fleeing a brutal civil war. One of the Paris attackers is reported to have gotten to France from Syria by posing as a refugee, and Republicans say they are worried that letting in thousands of Syrian refugees would make the United States vulnerable to a Paris-style terrorist attack. But the administration said on Tuesday that it had no intention of backing away from the refugee plan. In a series of tense exchanges with Republicans at a House Judiciary Committee hearing, Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch said a “significant and robust” vetting process for the refugees would identify any security threats. That process will include not only searches of domestic and foreign intelligence databases for information on possible terrorist threats, she said, but also interviews with all applicants, as well as fingerprinting and biometric testing. The White House said the refugees would be “subject to the highest level of security checks of any category of traveler to the United States.” Denis R. McDonough, the White House chief of staff, and other top administration officials also held a 90-minute conference call on Tuesday with 34 governors to answer questions and to try to ease concerns about the refugee plan. Some governors have been threatening to try to block Syrian refugees from entering their states, but the White House sought to assure them that rigorous checks were in place to guard against security risks. Ms. Lynch acknowledged that the influx of refugees from a war-torn region “certainly does present challenges” in ensuring security, but she said the United States was in a much better position than its European counterparts to identify threats among refugees. Her assurances did little to mollify Republicans on the committee, who attacked the refugee plan as a sign of the Obama administration’s insufficient concern about national security. “I’m very troubled by the confidence you seem to exude here and the president exudes,” Representative Steve King, Republican of Iowa, told the attorney general. The system for identifying security risks among refugees “doesn’t sound at all robust to me,” he said. Several Republicans challenged Ms. Lynch by pointing to testimony last month before the House Homeland Security Committee by the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, who sounded far less confident about the government’s ability to weed out refugees who pose terrorism threats. Mr. Comey said the databases that the government relied on to screen people might not include enough reliable data from Syria. “If someone has never made a ripple in the pond in Syria in a way that would get their identity or their interest reflected in our database, we can query our database until the cows come home, but we are not going to — there will be nothing show up, because we have no record on that person,” he said. More than two dozen Republican governors are vowing to try to block the entry of Syrian refugees into the United States, and all the Republican presidential candidates have called for blocking refugees from Syria entirely or limiting the group to Christians. President Obama expressed scorn for that idea this week. “We do not have religious tests for our compassion,” he said. “That is not who we are.” |