They lead the nation in ISIS recruitment, so why not give them special access?

We commonly hear of the refugee crisis coming out of Syria but they aren’t the only country with the problem. The war-town African country of Somalia has also been having substantial issues with its population. This overview shows that the number of registered Somali refugees is fairly close to one million people just in Somalia’s geographic region, while another overview shows that Somalia has over one million internally displaced persons which creates many other issues. Furthermore, Minnesota has been impacted with tens of thousands of Somali Muslims refugees settling in Minneapolis from jihadi influenced Somalia, which has created a hotbed for terrorist recruitment. Numerous Somali Muslims in the Minneapolis-Saint Paul area have left to join terrorist groups like Al Shabaab and ISIS or have been apprehended by government authorities. As reported last year by the StarTribune, “Minnesota leads the nation in the number of people who have left or sought to leave the country to fight with terrorists aligned with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant in Syria[.]” Worse yet, there is a vocal segment within the Somali-Muslim community that doesn’t blame the terrorists for luring their children into the cause of jihad, but blames the authorities for ‘racial profiling’ – which reflects in them a type of victimhood mentality. For example, Breitbart reports how during a June terrorism trial that found multiple Somalis guilty of terrorism related charges a contributor to City Journal, Scott W. Johnson, was disturbed by the animosity of the Somali community toward the government:

Perhaps most shocking to me was what utterly ordinary members of the Minnesota Somali community the defendants and their friends appeared to be. So far as I can tell, Somali culture is alien and hostile to the United States. Many among the local Somali community considered the defendants to be persecuted innocents entrapped by the government. It would be unduly charitable to characterize the attitude as willful blindness.

We have seen this suspicion manifested before such as when Somali-Muslim leaders blamed the TSA for ‘racial profiling’ several months ago and called for an investigation into the matter. Even after Somali groups received hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars in federal and state grants under President Obama’s Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) program, the Somali Muslim community is still distrustful of the government. Apparently this constant complaining by leaders from the Somali-Muslim community is a reoccurring theme even when DHS has attempted to be transparent and given them special access to the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. Judicial Watch reports:

On at least two occasions—December 18, 2014 and February 18, 2015—federal authorities granted the unprecedented excursions of the facility’s sterile and secure areas, according to Transportation Security Administration (TSA) records obtained by Judicial Watch. The DHS agency that conducted the expeditions, Customs and Border Protection (CBP), provided the Muslim participants with “an in-depth, on-site tour and discussion of CBP’s airport, including both inbound and outbound passenger processing,” the TSA files state. Besides multiple roundtable meetings between CBP and Somali community leaders including imams, the records show that a luncheon and “cultural exchange and educational brief” also took place between December 2014 and February 2015 so that attendees could ask about the agency’s “specific practices” at the airport. The roundtable events and airport tours were organized by Abdirizak Farah, who is identified in the records as a policy advisor in the DHS Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (CRCL). Farah joined DHS in 2010 with an annual salary of $89,033 and by 2015 his yearly pay increased to $130,453, according to a government database. The TSA’s “Somali liaison officer” in Minneapolis, Andrew Rhoades, told Judicial Watch that the special airport tours were organized for Somali Muslims after they complained to Johnson [DHS secretary] that they felt “harassed and profiled” by CBP at the Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport. The DHS secretary had “a sympathetic ear to that,” Rhoades said, adding that no other group has been granted such airport access by DHS…

Not only is DHS’s preferential conduct disturbing, the fact they possibly gave Islamists or those associated with Islamist groups access to procedures and processes that protect airport security is even more troubling. We have already seen how the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport has been used by jihadists traveling to Syria to join ISIS – this was the case with Abdi Nur in 2014. Also, one ISIS supporter/sympathizer allegedly once worked at the airport. DHS and other department’s ignorance of the threat of Sharia and jihad is sadly not surprising considering how federal bureaus and agencies have given into the political correctness of the Islamist agenda. For example, a June 2016 DHS CVE Subcommittee report recommends avoiding the use of words such as “jihad,” “sharia,” “takfir” or “umma.” These kinds of suggestions handicap our authorities from detecting important ‘red flags’ that help in preventing Islamic terror attacks.

DHS is not only showing favoritism to the Somali-Muslim community in Minneapolis, but it is also jeopardizing U.S. security by giving into the demands of Islamists. In addition, there’s little to no evidence that the CVE programs are actually working to reduce extremism and build meaningful bridges with the Muslim community. Furthermore, a couple of months ago up to thirty Somali males harassed residents of a Minneapolis neighborhood, and one woman said a man made threats of kidnap and rape. With incidents such as this one, how are we supposed to believe that youth outreach is having a meaningful effect in Minneapolis? Our taxpayer dollars must be spent more wisely – President Obama can start by scrapping the whole CVE program.