Federal Law Enforcement Officials Fear ISIS Present inside U.S.

By Joe Guzzardi
February 6, 2015

While in Mississippi for a local law enforcement conference, FBI Director James Comey said that the Islamic State of Syria and Iraq is already in the U.S. and actively plotting to kill Americans. Comey’s statement came as Americans sat horrified watching the news that ISIS had burned alive a Jordanian pilot.

The FBI, said Comey, has open cases against possible ISIS terrorists in every state of the Union except Alaska. The biggest threat could be individuals, or “troubled souls” as Comey called them, training in their basements to fulfill the ISIS mission to “just kill somebody.” The target may be any average American.

In a Fox News interview Steve Rogers, formerly assigned to the FBI’s National Joint Terrorism Task Force, urged Americans to heed Comey’s warning and to be vigilant. Rogers recalled that in the early 2000’s, he read the al-Qaeda training manual that laid out a 30- year plan to take down the U.S. in America. The strategies included infiltrating neighborhoods, universities, schools, markets, and the news media, goals they easily achieved as had previous anti-American factions.  During World War II Nazi sympathizers lived within the U.S. and during the Cold War, Russia had its spies embedded in mainstream society.

Rogers blamed Obama’s failed policies for putting Americans at risk. Releasing Gitmo prisoners and allowing foreign-nationals to exploit the administration’s open borders immigration agenda are essential components in terrorist attack formulas.

Kenneth Palinkas, president of the National Citizenship and Services Council that represents 12,000 frontline immigration caseworkers and adjudicators, confirms Rogers’ analysis. In his press release, Palinkas wrote that ISIS has likely already exploited immigration laws and lax visa regulations. Palinkas pointed to the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, the 9/11 attacks, the Boston Marathon bombing, and  a Moroccan’s plot to destroy a school and Connecticut courthouse with drone-like devices as evidence that the U.S. is letting terrorists into the country right through the front door.

Immigration caseworkers are denied the professional resources and enforcement tools they need to keep out those who are bent on perpetrating harm against innocent Americans. Worse, the administration has widened the asylum loopholes that terrorists exploit, and has also blocked Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from deporting those who overstay their visas.

Even though the 9/11 hijackers came to the U.S. on visas, 13 years later five million visa overstayers have filtered into the general population, their whereabouts unknown.

Whether as temporary visitors, permanent residents, refugees, asylum-seekers, students, or as recipients of the visa waiver system which admits foreign nationals from 38 countries without inspection, millions come legally to the U.S. every year.  Fraudulent applicants face no consequences, but instead are likely to have their paperwork rubber-stamped. Palinkas mockingly labels the U.S. the world’s largest visa clearing house.

The Obama administration is indifferent to Americans’ safekeeping. In a memorandum distributed to U.S. sheriffs last week, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson threatened that if Congress blocks the president’s executive action to legalize five million illegal immigrants, funding for their grants that are used to protect citizens will be denied.

The only way to interpret Johnson’s memo is that the Obama administration puts the priorities of unlawful immigrants above the nation’s safety.

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Joe Guzzardi is a Californians for Population Stabilization Senior Writing Fellow. Contact him at [email protected]