WASHINGTON – As U.S. security officials worry about jihadist fighters with U.S. passports returning to the United States to conduct terrorist attacks, there also is mounting concern over foreign students who have overstayed their student visas, according to Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin.
Rep. Gus Bilirakis, R-Fla., said not only have 58,000 foreign students overstayed their special visas, but more than 6,000 of them cannot be located.
“These gaps in the student visa system pose serious security threats to the United States and exploit the laws that allow for legitimate academic and cultural visitors, which I support,” Bilirakis said.
He pointed out that some 4,000 foreign fighters, with some 300 coming from the U.S., are of college age. Bilirakis’ concern is that some of those fighters could be from the ranks of the missing 6,000 and others from the 58,000 who have overstayed their visas.
However, the Department of Homeland Security, which has jurisdiction over immigration, visas and customs, has not followed up on locating the students.
“The threat is real,” Bilirakis said. “Some of the terrorists responsible for the 9/11 attacks and the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center entered the country through the student visa program.”
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Bilirakis also revealed that since Sept. 11, some 26 student visa holders have been arrested on terror-related charges.
Given the high number of missing students, there is mounting concern that some would be susceptible to ISIS radicalization, especially since the jihadist group is particularly adept at using social media to influence Western young people.
There are recent examples.
A 19-year-old suburban Chicago man was arrested at O’Hare airport in Chicago as he prepared to board an airplane to Turkey via Vienna, Austria, where there is a sizable recruiting effort underway. From Turkey he was to go into Syria allegedly to join ISIS. He was arrested by the FBI’s Chicago Joint Terrorism Task Force on a charge of materially aiding a terrorist group, ISIS.
Mohammed Hamza Khan allegedly told his parents in a three-page note that he had “an obligation” to join ISIS and be part of its caliphate which had been established between portions of Syria and Iraq.
“We are all witness that the Western societies are getting more immoral day by day,” Khan said in the note. “I do not want my kids being exposed to filth like this.”
According to sources, the FBI was tipped off by Austrian Airlines concerning Khan’s flight itinerary. While being detained, the FBI executed a search warrant of his parents’ home in a Chicago suburb where they found the three-page note. They also found a number of handwritten papers supporting ISIS and a contact list in Syria.
Khan reportedly told the FBI that a Turkish contact he met online had given him the names of people to be in touch with once in Syria.
Material support to a terrorist group carries a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
Similarly, 19-year-old Shannon Maureen Conley was arrested at Denver International Airport while attempting to board a plane for Turkey. She apparently was a trained nurse in the U.S. military.
Her luggage contained literature about al-Qaida and computer disks of statements by the American, Anwar al-Awlaki, who was killed by a U.S. drone attack in Yemen, along with his U.S. citizen son, raising questions over the outright killing of Americans even if they belong to a terrorist group.
On Conley’s Facebook page, using the Islamic name Halima, she had listed her job as “Slave to Allah.” And on her Google Plus account she had written, “[W]hen there are so few mujahideen (jihadist fighters), is it not our duty to fight regardless of our country of birth and/or residence?”
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