How the Obama Administration Sabotages our National Security

President Obama’s outrageous decision to enter a secret deal to take in between 1,800 and 2,400 refugees that Australia refuses to admit only verifies his enduring indifference to our national security.

The Obama Administration’s decision to agree to accept refugees who originated from countries designated as state sponsors of terrorism validates the American Center for Law and Justice’s warning that the waning days of this Administration are the most dangerous period for possible lawless overreach in recent memory. This decision shatters beyond recovery any remaining trust the American people have that President Obama’s Administration is prepared to act based on the actual dangers we face. Instead, as my colleague Wesley Smith wrote more than six weeks ago, the Administration is prepared to ignore the enemy, while tying the hands of U. S. law enforcement officers. 

Rather than identify the enemy as radical Islam, President Obama prefers to ignore the evidence that stares him in the face each and every day while maintaining his self-proclaimed commitment to openness and transparency. Still, facts are stubborn things that expose the hollowness of the Administration’s predisposition to congratulate itself rather than engage in sound policy analysis.

When you look at the facts of the mall shooting in Minnesota, the pressure cooker bombs in New York and New Jersey, and the shootings in Orlando and San Bernardino, it’s no coincidence that each of the perpetrators proclaimed that their conduct was prompted by a commitment to radical jihad.  Similar motives were on display at Ohio State the Monday after Americans returned from the Thanksgiving Holiday.

On Monday November 28, 2016, the American people were treated to the spectacle of Abdul Razak Ali Artan, a knife-wielding assailant, who attacked eleven people on Ohio State University’s campus in Columbus, Ohio. His last Facebook post before the attack embraced a chillingly clear message that read in part in part “By Allah, we will not let you sleep unless you give peace to the Muslims…” Reacting to this attack in a peculiarly spineless manner, FBI officials were only willing to say that Artan may have been inspired by ISIS or radical Islamic leaders to carry out his attack but they have yet to find direct links or determine his motive. The only reason the Obama Administration—including the FBI and Justice Department—could not find a motive for Artan’s attack is because they were going out of their way to ignore what was plainly happening before their very eyes.

This is all part of a persistently disturbing pattern that has gone on for far too long. For instance, rather than deal with the reality of radical Islamic terror that persistently issues forth from the Middle East, the Obama Administration has decided to admit a disproportionate number of male Muslim refugees from Syria although Syrian Christians and Yazidis are most at risk from Islamic State genocide and even though this is a demographic most likely to pose a known risk to the homeland and national security. Rather than admit the actual evidence on the ground showing a direct connection between terror and radical Islam, the Administration is prepared to capitulate to its own incompetence in vetting immigrants, which is demonstrated by its decision to grant citizenship to immigrants whose names have not been run through the FBI’s database. Instead of acknowledging that ISIS has publicly proclaimed its intention to infiltrate Western nations through refugee immigration, the Administration prefers to downplay the threat and scrub references to Sharia and jihad from law enforcement training manuals.

Rather than openly conceding that many of the refugees that Australia has rejected—and who are now under consideration for admittance by the Obama Administration—have previously engaged in human rights abuses involving children while being held in refugee camps, and rather than place the safety and security of the American people ahead of his politically correct ideology, which represents a serious break from reality, President Obama prefers to sabotage our nation’s security and insult the intelligence of the American people by increasing the nation’s terror threat landscape, all while hiding the details of his Australian refugee program from Congress and the American people. This can be plainly seen in the State Department’s unprecedented decision to classify and thus keep secret the details on refugees to be resettled in American via a secret deal with Australia.  

Three weeks ago, shortly after the presidential election, the ACLJ stated that the American people have spoken by demanding change while rejecting the failed policies of the last four years. The American people, forcefully and unmistakably, have demanded accountability from our leaders and adherence to our Constitution.

The time for accountability is at hand and the time for lawless executive overreach, including backroom deals that solve other countries refugee problems, is over. As part of our continuing effort to end deception and corruption, the ACLJ has filed several lawsuits to hold the Obama Administration accountable over the past several months. We will continue to monitor this Administration as part of our effort to place national security ahead of political correctness. We are preparing to file another lawsuit to demand the answers the Administration is illegally withholding from us about their purge and scrubbing of intelligence briefings using terms such as “Sharia” and “jihad.”

Since any attempt by the Obama Administration to expand the number of improperly vetted refugees admitted to this country from Syria, Australian refugee camps or elsewhere, during the Administration’s last six weeks poses a clear and present danger to the nation, the ACLJ’s Government Accountability Project will continue to bring pressure to bear on the Administration as we urge President-Elect Trump to swiftly reject the failed policies of the Obama Administration by scuttling the deal with Australia on January 20, 2017.

The United States should no longer offer a welcome mat for terror threats. The sabotage of the nation’s security must end.