Tag: Mark Green

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Jihad in the U.S. including Tennessee

The U.S. House Subcommittee on Counterrorism and Intelligence just released a snapshot report titled “Foreign Jihadist Networks and Homegrown Violent Extremism: a Persistent Terror Threat to America”. https://homeland.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Updated-Terror-Threat-Snapshot-copy.pdf

The 14-page report lists selected incidents of U.S.-based jihadi attacks, foreign terrorist networks and homegrown violent extremism. The report is a thin summary of the many jihadi-inspired attacks in the U.S. over the years. More on that at a later date.

The report’s contents should not surprise anyone who has been paying attention since the jihadis have been here for a loooooong time. They have been enabled to metastasize and enlarge their circles of influence through immigration, conversion and preaching a doctrine that hates the Judeo-Christian west with the end goal of eliminating it – subjugation through acts of terror, political sharia, providing material support to jihadi groups, killing individuals with vehicles and knives – whatever it takes.

It’s perfectly reasonable to assume that at least since the 2007 successful prosecution of leaders of the Holy Land Foundation and the exposing of the Muslim Brotherhood’s presence and plan (referred to as the 1991 Memorandum for North America, linked below), our government has known about these actors and their intentions.

It does not appear, however, that our government was either consistent or persistent in taking the Brotherhood and jihadi commitment to our destruction, seriously enough.

Originally named the “Occupied Land Fund”, the Holy Land Foundation was the largest Islamic charity in the U.S. which claimed it was raising funds to bring humanitarian relief to needy Palestinians in the “occupied territories” – a claim dispelled by the prosecution of the fund’s leaders. 

The 2007 prosecution by the DOJ shut down the Foundation for funding Hamas and other Islamic terrorist organizations. 

Several of the Islamist organizations operating in the U.S. and named in the Muslim Brotherhood’s 1991 plan titled An Explanatory Memorandum On the General Strategic Goal for the Group In North Americawere named as unindicted co-conspirators for providing material support in the form of raising money to support the U.S. designated terrorist organization Hamas. 

In 2009, when ISNA (Islamic Society of North America), and several other of the big Islamist organizations still in full operation today, unsuccessfully challenged their unindicted co-conspirator status, the judge held that “[t]he government has produced ample evidence to establish the associations of CAIR, ISNA, NAIT, with NAIT, the Islamic Association for Palestine, and with Hamas.” 

(As a side note, Metro Nashville Council member Zulfat Suara has been an active participant with ISNA which named her “Muslim policy advocate of the year”,speaking at their 2018 conference on a panel with her good friend and fellow Jew hater Rashida Tlaib.. That was the same year that during Suara’s leadership of AMAC, they featured virulent Jew-hating anti-Israel speakers to attack Zionism).

The point of this history lesson is to question why members of Congress like Rep. Mark Green who chairs the House Homeland Security Committee aren’t talking about the organizations operating in the U.S. which are affiliated with or otherwise connected to and supportive of Hamas?

Mark Green could perhaps start with a hearing featuring people like CAIR’s executive director Nihad Awad. The committee and viewing public could watch Awad’s 1994, unconditional statement of moving his support from one terrorist organization, the PLO, to Hamas:

I used to support the PLO, and I used to be the President of the General Union of Palestine Students which is part of the PLO here in the United States, but after I researched the situation inside Palestine and outside, I am in support of the Hamas movement more than the PLO.

https://www.investigativeproject.org/223/cairs-awad-in-support-of-the-hamas-movement

Shortly after the October 7th massacre Awad amplified his support for terrorism and Hamas. 

Better yet, why not indict and move forward with prosecutions of the organizations confirmed in the 2009 court ruling based on “ample evidence” to be connected to Hamas, a U.S. designated foreign terrorist organization? (Maybe Mark Green should meet with Steve Emerson ((investigative project on terrorism)) who has one of the most detailed catalogues of this type of documentation).

Why not peel back the layers of the Israel hating BDS group like the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights which, sounding similar to the Holy Land Foundation scheme, “helps facilitate tax-exempt donations to a Palestinian coalition that includes Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and other groups the U.S. State Department designates as terror organizations.” https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/bds-umbrella-group-linked-to-palestinian-terrorist-organizations

Will the day come when Congress tires of simply compiling “reports” to tell us that jihad in the U.S. is a continuing problem and instead, take action to dismantle at least some parts of its U.S. based jihadi infrastructure? After all, the report says it is a “persistent” threat. Maybe email Mark Green and ask him what comes after the 14-page snapshot report? https://markgreen.house.gov/email-me

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Muslim Activists Claim US Congressman a Threat..But Here’s the Real Threat

   

Muslim Tennessee activist Sabina Mohyuddin, executive director of the  Tennessee based Anti- American organization the American Muslim Advisory Council (AMAC) has a complaint…she wants Congressman Mark Green to be removed from his recent assignment as chair of the Homeland Security Committee. Mohyuddin and  Sumayyah Waheed, senior policy counsel at Muslim Advocates, a national civil rights group based in Washington, D.C. claims Green is anti Muslim, and anti-LGBTIQ which will be a threat to Muslims.

Congressman Mark Green a threat to Muslims?  Someone who has served three tours of duty overseas during the War on Terror, and played an active role in the capture of Saddam Hussein, is  hardly a threat to Muslims.

But lets look at who the real threat is.

The American Muslim Advisory Council was formed in 2011 in opposition to what they deemed an anti sharia law bill in the state of TN. Sharia law,( Islamic law) is completely antithetical to our Constitution and laws of America. Sharia is based only on the laws that their prophet Muhammad created and therefore any man made law is illegal. The Taliban and other Islamic groups are known for enforcing Sharia law, which speaks volumes.

Throughout the years, board members of AMAC have associated with known Muslim Brotherhood organizations. The Muslim Brotherhood has been officially declared a terrorist group in many countries in the Middle East, while many of the groups that fall under their umbrella here in America have also been deemed terrorist groups. One such group is the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) which is Hamas. Hamas is listed on the US Dept of States foreign terrorist organizations as of 1997.  Sumayyah Waheed Currently, serves on the board of CAIR-Washington.

 In 1994, a year before the United States labeled the Palestinian extremist group Hamas a Foreign Terrorist Organization, two individuals who were at the time working for a Hamas offshoot organization (the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP)) founded CAIR to support Hamas’ agenda in the United States. The IAP was also a known front for the Muslim Brotherhood.

Over the years, CAIR’s alleged ties to Hamas have proved troublesome for the organization. In 2007, federal prosecutors reportedly designated CAIR a co-conspirator with the Holy Land Foundation, a group that was eventually convicted for financing terrorism. In 2014, CAIR was designated a terrorist organization by the United Arab Emirates and multiple CAIR members have been arrested on charges related to terrorism.  Read more on CAIR here : https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/council-on-american-islamic-relations-cair/

Zulfat Suara, the current treasurer for AMAC, and also an at large Nashville Metro Council Commissioner received an award from Muslim Brotherhood front group the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA).  ISNA is the largest Muslim Brotherhood organization operating here in the United States, with its head quarters in Wayne NJ

Linda Sarsour, a well known rabid Anti Israel Palestinian American activist, was invited to speak at AMAC’s 10 year celebration. 

In 2017, AMAC also was the recipient of a  Proteus Fund grant from  George Soros’s Open Society Foundation. 

In addition to Sabina Mohyuddin’s complaint about Congressman Green and his stance on Islamic issues, Mohyuddin also states he has made anti LGBTQ statements. Perhaps Mohyuddin should explain that her religious beliefs are extremely harsh when it comes to the LGBTQ community. In June 2013, Mohyuddin gave a power point presentation in which she stated American Muslims just want to be true to their “religious values”.  The Koran is very clear when it comes to homosexuality, Quran (7:80-84)–“…For ye practice your lusts on men in preference to women: ye are indeed a people transgressing beyond bounds…. And we rained down on them a shower (of brimstone)”

Mohyuddins religious values are also based upon the hadiths of the Prophet Muhammad, which states: Sahih Bukhari (72:774) – “The Prophet cursed effeminate men (those men who are in the similitude (assume the manners of women) and those women who assume the manners of men, and he said, ‘Turn them out of your houses .’ The Prophet turned out such-and-such man, and ‘Umar turned out such-and-such woman.”

“if a man comes upon a man, then they are both adulterers,” “If a woman comes upon a woman, they are both adulteresses,” “When a man mounts another man, the throne of God shakes,” and “Kill the one that is doing it and also kill the one that it is being done to.” (Abu Dawud 4462 and al-Tirmidhi 1456)

Its’s quite interesting to know several members of CAIR have made statements regarding the LGBTQ community.  CAIR frequently hosts events featuring Muslim preachers known for virulent anti-gay rhetoric. A frequent speaker at CAIR fundraisers, Siraj Wahhaj, famously threatened to burn down a proposed LGBT-friendly mosque in Toronto in 1992. Suhaib Webb, another favorite of CAIR events, called homosexuality an “evil inclination” in 2007. Omar Suleiman, who has recorded numerous promotional videos for CAIR, has called homosexuality a “disease” and a “repugnant, shameless sin.” Islamic Shura Council of Southern California leader Muzammil Siddiqi, with whom CAIR held a joint press conference following the December 2015 San Bernardino terror attack, has advocated the death penalty for homosexuals in Muslim countries.

So who’s the real threat? 

 

 

 

 

 

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Pro Illegal Immigration Org Says State Needs to Fund More Services for UACs

A June 2021 report issued by the Migration Policy Institute (MPI) says that Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) and the “parents or other sponsors” to whom they are released after being smuggled across the border illegally, need better post-release services.

Better yet, MPI’s report Strengthening Services for Unaccompanied Children in U.S. Communities, recommends that state and local governments and philanthropy should fund legal, medical, mental-health, economic and educational services needed by these illegal aliens. They are especially concerned about UACs who are relocated to “rural and other underserved communities.”

Major funders of MPI include the U.S. State Department, Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc, National Conference of State Legislatures, Soros Open Society Foundations, and the Gates Foundation.

MPI emphasizes that immigration status and any immigration enforcement must not be connected to any post-release services provided to either the UAC or their sponsor. The disconnect between immigration status and enforcement is echoed in Mark Green’s UAC bill and was similarly ignored in 2015, when Tennessee state senators voted to reward illegal immigration by awarding in-state tuition to illegal alien students in the state.

Then state senator Green voted for that bill as did Sen. Richard Briggs who supports Green’s UAC bill and also sits on the legislative joint study committee addressing the UAC issue in Tennessee.

One particular post-release service emphasized in the MPI report is free legal representation for UACs since it dramatically increases the likelihood that immigration relief will be awarded so they can remain in the U.S.. Noted in multiple reports is the fact that UACs who do not have attorneys simply don’t show up for their immigration hearings. Per the DHS FY20 enforcement report, of the 6,105 UACs ordered removed by immigration judges 4,514 of them failed to show up in court. That was just for FY20 which one analyst says demonstrates the incentive for UACs to enter illegally because they know they can stay and also incentivizes parents to smuggle their children into the U.S..

The MPI authors claim that after the federal government makes sure to dump the arriving UACs into local communities, “most children receive no federal follow-up services.” MPI says that enhanced post-release services are needed because UACs are traumatized by their trip to the U.S. border (many of whom are smuggled by coyotes paid for by parents also in the U.S. illegally), they may be reuniting with parents who abandoned them in their home country and may have now married in the U.S. and have anchor babies, so integrating into this new environment can be stressful for the arriving UAC. 

Like Green’s UAC bill, the MPI authors acknowledge that there is “no citizenship or immigration-related requirement for sponsor (for the UAC) approval. Green’s bill goes one step further and enables an illegal alien sponsor to override a governor’s veto for UAC placement in a state. This effectively puts a state in a position of abetting illegal immigration which former federal prosecutor Josh Jones says is indisputably “linked with organized crime.”

MPI admits that parent benefit from getting UACs into the U.S.:

“The great majority of unaccompanied children who enter ORR custody are released to a parent or close relative. In FY2020 of children who left ORR custody, about 39 percent were released to a parent, 46 percent to another close relative, and 16 percent to a more distance relative, family friend, or other approved sponsor.”

The open border advocates also want schools to do more to provide support to these new students and their families but admit that not all entrants enroll in school. It is reasonable to assume that the high number of male 15-17 year olds currently entering as UACs are not coming for education. Illegal employment and gang connections are, however, reasonable assumptions based on accumulated data. MPI itself cites (and disputes) 2017 ORR data that “1.6 percent of unaccompanied children in ORR custody had gang affiliations.”

While emphasizing the economic stresses for arriving UACs and their families made worse by the COVID pandemic, MPI also confirms what should be of great concern to legislators:

“Unaccompanied children often lack health insurance and lack access to primary care after release from ORR custody. Some children with jobs cannot access health insurance through their employer if they are not eligible for work permits.” (emphasis supplied)

Anyone else wondering how and where they are working? This admission by the left should be enough for Tennessee legislators to finally require ALL businesses in Tennessee to use E-verify.

In addition, officials reported a “900 percent increase in July for the number of migrants testing (COVID) positive.” And while the federal government is putting travel restrictions in place for U.S. citizens and state and local governments are debating whether to revert to certain COVID restrictions, the Biden administration is moving UACs and other illegal aliens from the border to communities across the country.

At the same time, the Biden administration had earlier threatened Americans further by planning to lift the Title 42 public health restrictions used by the Trump administration to block thousands of illegal aliens from entering the U.S. due to COVID. With numbers increasing, rescinding the Title 42 order is on hold.

In the meantime, GOP Senators John Coryn and Thom Tillis are using the “bipartisan” approach to reward illegal immigration by proposing an amnesty for DACA grantees even while admitting that the Obama program is unconstitutional. Tennessee state legislators Mark White and Todd Gardenhire also wanted to reward beneficiaries of the unconstitutional program. Coryn and Tillis unabashedly admit that it’s about maintaining the workforce. This is no different than Tennessee state legislators who refuse to protect legal workers in Tennessee, especially lower skilled workers, by passing comprehensive E-verify. Tennessee has it’s own misguided pro-illegal immigration state legislators who also are all too willing to concede on the issue. 

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Is Mark Green Conflating Illegal Aliens With Refugees?

It’s anybody’s best guess why Green’s explanation of his bill, H.R.3500, doesn’t match what he’s telling folks it’s supposed to do.

Green’s press release about his new bill, “Leads Fight to Block Refugee Resettlement Without State Consent” states in part:

“Last week, in the dead of night, unaccompanied migrant children were flown into Tennessee without our approval or consent. I am alarmed that the Biden Administration would use taxpayer resources to transport refugees into Tennessee without transparency or coordination with state authorities. This overreach and secrecy has to stop.”

In a recent interview with WRCBtv Chattanooga, Green said that he drafted the bill in response to what happened in Chattanooga and that “this bill would mandate permission of the state before they move illegal migrants to Tennessee.”

One really obvious problem is that U.S. law recognizes refugees as legal immigrants who enter the country with express permission of the U.S. government in conformance to specific criteria in U.S. law defining who is a refugee.

The “illegal migrants” Green refers to are Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) who are either dumped at the border by human traffickers or like 16-year old killer Edwin Mejia who was sent to his illegal alien brother in Tennessee, cross the border on their own.

The Congressional Research Service (CRS) which refers to itself as Congress’ “think tank” writes, “[u]naccompanied alien children are statutorily defined as children who lack lawful immigration status in the United States, are under age 18, and lack a parent or legal guardian in the United States or a parent or legal guardian in the United States who is available to provide care and physical custody.”

If the UAC is from a contiguous country, meaning Canada or Mexico and is not a victim of trafficking, Customs & Border Patrol (CBP) can send them back. If however, the UAC is from a non-contiguous country, the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) takes custody. These UACs can apply for asylum or other relief like the Special Immigrant Juvenile Visa (SIJV) which allows them to remain in the U.S. and puts them on a path to citizenship.

Unlike refugees who are legally admissible to the U.S. before they arrive, UACs are subject to removal until and only if they end up with a legal immigration status.

Importantly, the transfer to ORR custody does not in any way convert the UAC into a refugee. In 2002, Congress passed the Homeland Security Act which did many things including moving custody of the UACs from the former Immigration & Naturalization Services to ORR. This change evolved from a series of lawsuits and consent decrees but did not magically make UACs refugees.

An April 2021 CRS paper notes that “[a]ccording to CBP data, almost all apprehended UAC originate from Mexico and the ‘Northern Triangle’ countries – Honduras, ElSalvador, and Guatemala” and that up until FY19 most UACs were coming from Mexico but then flipped to 86% coming from the Northern Triangle countries.

This is a very important data point relating to Green’s bill. Whether he realizes it or not, the way he explains his bill’s purpose is precisely what the Obama administration tried to do in 2014, with the Central American Minors (CAM) program to administratively expand U.S. law on refugees and create a refugee resettlement program for this group. Refugees and asylees must show persecution on account of membership in certain groups, such as nationality or race. The CAM program allowed the ill-defined “particular social group” category to be applicable for various new conditions, such as single motherhood. If it were to be applied system-wide to refugee resettlement it would represent the largest expansion of the definition of the term “refugee” ever seen in the history of the resettlement program. 

 As Obama’s Secretary of State John Kerry said:

“I am pleased to announce that we have plans to expand the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program in order to help vulnerable families and individuals from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras and offer them a safe and legal alternative to the dangerous journey that many are tempted to begin, making them at that instant easy prey for human smugglers who have no interest but their own profits.”

Trump ended the CAM program in 2017. 

Looking at Obama’s attempt to expand who qualifies as a refugee, Center for Immigration Studies senior researcher Dr. Nayla Rush questioned whether Central American children even meet the legal definition of refugee. She makes the following points :

    • “the UN says most are not refugees” 
    • the Migration Policy Institute* appears to agree that – “…being forced to join a gang or experiencing violence do not generally qualify as a basis for refugee status or fall readily into one the the [U.S. law] refugee definition categories.”
    • out of the 50 most dangerous cities in the world in 2015 (excluding those undergoing a war), four are in the United States: St Louis, Detroit, Baltimore, and New Orleans.25 Latin America, it is true, remains far ahead, with 41 cities included in the ranking. But are children who flee gang violence in St. Louis, Baltimore, or the other American cities that made it into the top of the most dangerous cities chart ‘potential refugees’? No one would even think to make that claim. 

One of the problems with Obama’s CAM program was that the parent had to be in the U.S. legally to obtain the coveted refugee status for  their child in Central America. In fact, many of the parents in the CAM program are themselves illegal aliens. 

In her conclusion Rush lets the real genie out of the bottle – it’s the children who, if they obtain refugee status, offer the route through which parents and siblings may obtain legal status in the U.S.

The libertarian Niskanen Center think tank also acknowledges that UACs are ineligible for refugee status. They argue that UACs could get refugee status if U.S. law would expand to include forced conscription, gang recruitment and gender discrimination.

It is a very real possibility that the Biden administration will like Obama, use administrative actions to expand who qualifies as a refugee. This is precisely how the U.S. refugee admissions program under Obama created the resettlement program for the LGBT refugee. 

Green’s bill and his explanation of its purpose confuse UACs with refugees – precisely what Obama and the open border leftists want and the reason they categorize every illegal alien as a “refugee”. 

Even if Green is trying to “cleverly” pre-empt a move by the Biden administration to recreate an Obamaesque CAM program, the mandate that “States Have a Say” will fall on deaf ears for the majority of Republican governors who turned down President Trump’s refugee resettlement opt out in 2019.

 

The plain language of Green’s bill says it will amend 8 USC 1522 – the section of federal law that addresses refugee admissions and which by reference to another section of the code, defines the legal term “refugee” – a term which does not include Green’s “illegal migrants”.

Even assuming Green is relying on the language of Trump’s presidential determination on refugee admissions for FY2021, UACs would still have to meet specific criteria to qualify as a refugee.

All of the legal mumbo jumbo aside, what Tennessee taxpayers should really be concerned about with Green conflating UACs and  refugee resettlement, is the lessons learned from Tennessee’s 10th Amendment challenge to the federal resettlement program. The big take-aways simply put are:

    • upon arrival to the U.S. refugees are immediately able to access all forms of public assistance  on the same basis as U.S. citizens
    • refugees must adjust their status to legal permanent resident (green card) status at year one after admission
    • the federal government has admitted that it shifts the massive cost of this program to state governments
    • and, BILL LEE HAS PASSIONATELY DEFENDED BRINGING MORE REFUGEES TO TENNESSEE 

If one accepts Green’s explanation of his bill, then any objection voiced by Bill Lee to the UACs should be questioned. When Trump gave Lee the choice to say “no” to continued refugee resettlement in Tennessee, Lee abandoned the state’s sovereignty in favor of his personal agenda regarding refugees. Then when he was challenged on his decision, he doubled down and in contravention of Trump’s Executive Order, claimed he had the authority to consent to refugee resettlement for the entire state.

Tennessee’s Lt. Governor and Speaker of the House have decided to convene a joint study committee prompted by the delivery of UACs to the state. Lt. Gov. McNally’s office issued a press release about the joint study committee and seems to be the lone voice at this time that understands that refugees, migrants and immigrants are not all the same and have different immigration statuses.

As a first, they need to change the name of the study committee from the misnomered “Joint Study Committee on Refugee Issues” to the more accurate “Joint Study Committee on Refugees, Illegal Aliens, Migrants & Immigrants”.

And as seems to have become the norm, the news about what the Lee administration’s role in another mishandled and mangled state government function, is not good. It seems that another one of Lee’s departments may have facilitated the arrival of the UACs. Some reports suggest that Lee’s Department of Children’s Services knew and approved that the Chattanooga facility applying for a state license was “to provide housing, personal care, supervision and monitoring to up to 100 unaccompanied minor children . . . ideally up to 30 days, until they are reunited with a sponsor home or appear at an immigration hearing.”

Sounds just like the set-up to receive and care for UACs.

If this report is accurate, Lee put some big egg on the faces of every Tennessee U.S. and state elected official yelling for transparency.

At the very least, we can only hope that the new joint study committee looks to real experts in the field on these issues. As for Mark Green, he should take a cue from the Lt. Governor and get some help from experts like Dr. Rush and figure out what he’s really trying to do with his bill. 

For starters though, Green should stop advancing the idea that there is a legitimate connection between illegally entering UACs and refugees and would do well to recall the multiple documented instances when MS-13 gang members entered the U.S. as UACs and were then awarded with refugee status – here, here and here. This should be of paramount concern now that under Biden, USCIS will stop asking about gang-related information when evaluating adjustment to legal permanent resident, aka, the green card which UACs who are awarded either asylum or the SIJV status are eligible to apply for.

At the very least, Green’s voters should expect an informed discussion of the issue.

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*”The Migration Policy Institute (MPI) is a think tank that produces research and policy analysis advocating for permanent legal residence for undocumented immigrants in the United States and increased legal rights for migrants and refugees worldwide. Migration Policy Institute receives funding from a variety of left-of-center ideological funders, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and George Soros’s Open Society Foundations.”