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The
Jihadists' Deadly Path to Citizenship
By Michelle Malkin
MichelleMalkin.com
America's homeland security amnesia never ceases to amaze.
In the aftermath of the botched Times Square terror attack over the weekend,
Pakistani-born bombing suspect Faisal Shahzad's U.S. citizenship status
caused a bit of shock and awe. The Atlantic magazine writer Jeffrey
Goldberg's response was typical: "I am struck by the fact that he is a
naturalized American citizen, not a recent or temporary visitor." Well, wake
up and smell the deadly deception.
Shahzad's path to American citizenship -- he reportedly
married an American woman, Huma Mian, in 2008 after spending a decade in the
country on foreign student and employment visas -- is a tried-and-true
terror formula. Jihadists have been gaming the sham marriage racket with
impunity for years. And immigration benefit fraud has provided invaluable
cover and aid for U.S.-based Islamic plotters, including many other
operatives planning attacks on New York City. As I've reported previously:
-- El Sayyid A. Nosair wed Karen Ann Mills Sweeney to
avoid deportation for overstaying his visa. He acquired U.S. citizenship,
allowing him to remain in the country, and was later convicted for
conspiracy in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing that claimed six lives.
-- Ali Mohamed became an American citizen after marrying a
woman he met on a plane trip from Egypt to New York. Recently divorced,
Linda Lee Sanchez wed Mohamed in Reno, Nev., after a six-week "courtship."
Mohamed became a top aide to Osama bin Laden and was later convicted for his
role in the 1998 United States embassy bombings in Africa that killed 12
Americans and more than 200 others.
-- Embassy bombing plotter Khalid Abu al Dahab obtained
citizenship after marrying three different American women.
-- Embassy bombing plotter Wadih el Hage, Osama bin
Laden's personal secretary, married April Ray in 1985 and became a
naturalized citizen in 1989. Ray knew of her husband's employment with bin
Laden, but like many of these women in bogus marriages, she pleaded
ignorance about the nature of her husband's work. El Hage, she says, was a
sweet man, and bin Laden "was a great boss."
-- Lebanon-born Chawki Youssef Hammoud, convicted in a
Hezbollah cigarette-smuggling operation based out of Charlotte, N.C.,
married American citizen Jessica Fortune for a green card to remain in the
country.
-- Hammoud's brother, Mohammed Hammoud, married three
different American women. After arriving in the United States on a
counterfeit visa, being ordered deported and filing an appeal, he wed Sabina
Edwards to gain a green card. Federal immigration officials refused to award
him legal status after this first marriage was deemed bogus in 1994.
Undaunted, he married Jessica Wedel in May 1997 and, while still wed to her,
paid Angela Tsioumas (already married to someone else, too) to marry him in
Detroit. The Tsioumas union netted Mohammed Hammoud temporary legal
residence to operate the terror cash scam. He was later convicted on 16
counts that included providing material support to Hezbollah.
-- A total of eight Middle Eastern men who plotted to bomb
New York landmarks in 1993 -- Fadil Abdelgani, Amir Abdelgani, Siddig
Ibrahim Siddig Ali, Tarig Elhassan, Abdo Mohammed Haggag, Fares Khallafalla,
Mohammed Saleh, and Matarawy Mohammed Said Saleh -- all obtained legal
permanent residence by marrying American citizens.
A year after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, homeland security
officials cracked a massive illegal alien Middle Eastern marriage fraud ring
in a sting dubbed "Operation Broken Vows." Authorities were stunned by the
scope of the operations, which stretched from Boston to South Carolina to
California. But marriage fraud remains a treacherous path of least
resistance. The waiting period for U.S. citizenship is cut by more than half
for marriage visa beneficiaries. Sham marriage monitoring by backlogged
homeland security investigators is practically nonexistent.
As former federal immigration official Michael Cutler
warned years ago: "Immigration benefit fraud is certainly one of the major
'dots' that was not connected prior to the attacks of September 11, 2001,
and remains a 'dot' that is not really being addressed the way it needs to
be in order to secure our nation against criminals and terrorists who
understand how important it is for them to 'game' the system as a part of
the embedding process."
Jihadists have knowingly and deliberately exploited our
lax immigration and entrance policies to secure the rights and benefits of
American citizenship while they plot mass murder -- and we haven't done a
thing to stop them.