Terrorist posing as 'refugee' nabbed by cops

Italian police arrested a North African man they say helped plan the March 18 terrorist attack on a museum that killed 21 tourists and a police officer, and the man arrived in Italy on a boat posing as a refugee.

Police arrested 22-year-old Abdelmajid Touil, who faces terrorism and murder charges for his alleged involvement in planning the attack on the National Bardo Museum in Tunisia.

Touil, a Muslim, had arrived in Sicily aboard a boat with 90 other migrants one month before the attack, according to a Milan police official.

Abdelmajid Touil

Tunisian authorities have already arrested more than 20 others accused of carrying out the massacre. A terrorist group affiliated with the Islamic State, also called ISIS, claimed responsibility for the attack. A five-minute audio message posted on YouTube in the name of Jund al-Khilafah, or Soldiers of the Caliphate, threatened Tunisian politicians, including the country's president and prime minister, Voice of America reported.

Tunisia has experienced a surge in Islamic terrorism with the assassination of two secular politicians in the last two years as the violent fallout continues from the so-called "Arab Spring."

Italian investigators said Touil reached Sicily on a boat Feb. 17, and his mother and two brothers had been living legally in Italy for years, according to a report in the Sydney Morning Herald.

Italy's policy of welcoming the boat people from North Africa is increasingly a subject of fierce debate, similar to debates in the U.S. about whether to accept increasing numbers of Muslim refugees fleeing civil war and unrest in Syria and Somalia – two countries that contain high numbers of jihadists.

Prime Minister Matteo Renzi of Italy praised the arrest Wednesday, but politicians on the right criticized his government's failure to stop migrant boats from reaching Italy. The Muslim migrants have been arrived at a rate of about 6,000 per month since last fall, most of them crossing the Mediterranean from Libya.

Matteo Salvini, leader of Italy's anti-immigrant Northern League, cited the "long-denounced danger" of terrorism suspects reaching Europe aboard migrant boats and called for the authorities to try harder to thwart departures from North Africa, the Morning Herald reported.

In a statement, Mariastella Gelmini, one of the national leaders of the center-right party Forza Italia, said: "It is now clear that extremist terrorists use our country as a logistical base. We need strong action, also after the uncertainties of many European countries. We need to immediately stop the landings in Italy."

Hundreds of Muslim migrants land in Italy every day, coming from Libya. ISIS has promised to infiltrate the refugees but Italy's government continues to take them in under pressure from leftist community organizers and resettlement agencies.

Other politicians on the left said terrorists could take easier and less perilous routes to Italy than the overcrowded migrant boats that leave Libya and often call for help from the Italian coast guard while in transit.

Regardless of the mode of transportation, ISIS operatives have openly bragged on social media that they will infiltrate the refugee ranks to penetrate Western Europe and the U.S.

Italy becoming 'useful platform' for terrorists?

According to the International Organization for Migration, almost 39,000 people have arrived in Italy in the first five-and-a-half months of 2015, compared to more than 41,000 in 2014.

The Voice of America also reported the fact that a jihadist managed to enter Italy and mingle with migrants who landed on the Italian island of Sicily is causing consternation in Rome and has prompted an outcry from anti-immigration politicians. The head of the Northern League party, Matteo Salvini, is calling for the suspension of the Schengen agreement that allows people to move freely across most European Union state borders without passport and customs checks.

"Libyan intelligence says boats are arriving with Islamic State terrorists," Salvini said on Italian television. "Today in my Milan, a north African was arrested for involvement in the Tunisian massacre. Close the borders before it's too late."

Daniela Santanchèa, a lawmaker from former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia party, accused Italy's left-wing government of failing to protect the country, according to the VOA report. He said it was "unbelievable that this government, instead of defending us from cut-throats, has transformed Italy into a useful platform for terrorists."

U.S. has its own problem with terrorist refugees

The U.S. takes in more refugees than any other country at about 70,000 per year. Most are assigned by the United Nations. And there have been a number of high-profile arrests of refugees from Somalia over the past year, many of them charged with providing material support to terrorist organizations, while others have left the country to fight for terrorist groups including ISIS and al-Shabab.

The next big wave of refugees coming to America is from Syria.

The U.S. has already accepted several hundred Syrians this year, and the U.N. has 11,000 more in the pipeline waiting to get into America. Some refugee resettlement lobbyists, such as David Miliband of International Rescue Committee, have called upon the U.S. to take in at least 65,000 Syrians by the end of President Obama's term in office.

The FBI has warned that it is virtually impossible to screen Syrian refugees for ties to ISIS and other Islamic terror organizations. Michael Steinbach, deputy assistant director of the FBI's counter-terrorism unit, warned the U.S. House Homeland Security committee in February that the U.S. does not have the capability to properly vet refugees from a "failed state" like Syria, where the U.S. military does not have boots on the ground and does not have access to any reliable law enforcement records.

Is Congress ready to address refugee issue?

The House Homeland Security Committee was scheduled to hold another hearing on the issue on May 21, but that hearing was unexpectedly postponed, Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., announced on the committee's website.

The head of the House Homeland Security Committee says an Obama administration plan to resettle Syrian refugees in the U.S. is a "serious mistake" and should be stopped until safeguards are in place.

“We have no way … to know who these people are, and so I think bringing them in is a serious mistake,” said Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, chairman of the committee, during a press conference Thursday.

McCaul said the U.S. has “no intelligence footprint or capability” inside Syria to ensure refugees mean no harm.

“We don’t have databases on these individuals so we can’t properly vet them,” he added, “to know where they came from, to know what threat they pose, because we don’t have the data to cross-reference them with.”

McCaul, who has visited Syrian refugee camps overseas, said that while there are “a lot of mothers and kids, there are [also] a lot of males of the age that could conduct terrorist operations.”

“That concerns me,” he added.

The U.S. could resettle around 2,000 Syrian refugees this fiscal year and potentially thousands more in fiscal 2016 under the State Department-led effort. The Department of Homeland Security has authority to approve the admissions.