Efforts to block Palestinians from reaching the U.S. as immigrants or refugees are intensifying on Capitol Hill, where Republicans say the country must resist pressure to welcome people fleeing the Israel-Hamas war.
Fears grew over the weekend after federal prosecutors announced the arrest of a Palestinian asylum-seeker who they say was radicalized and was undergoing weapons training.
Rep. Ryan Zinke, Montana Republican, said the flurry of bills to block Palestinians, including a measure he introduced last week, is a sign of the lack of trust in the Biden administration to weed out bad actors.
“Considering my lack of faith in this administration to vet anybody, I don’t think it’s in the interests of our country to accept refugees from Gaza, from Palestinians, who are not vetted,” Mr. Zinke told The Washington Times.
Calls to accept Palestinians simmered even before Israel’s ground assault on Gaza encircled Gaza City in the north, producing thousands of casualties and forcing hundreds of thousands of people to flee their homes.
Republican resistance to the idea of accepting Palestinian refugees is growing.
“This bill is the harshest and most restrictive immigration bill I think that’s probably ever been crafted in recent memory,” Mr. Zinke said. “It really is based on the Biden administration’s track record of not vetting anybody.”
His legislation would block the government from admitting anyone who holds a Palestinian passport and would revoke any visas issued starting Oct. 1. The Department of Homeland Security would have to track down and deport Palestinians whose status has been revoked.
Reps. Thomas Tiffany of Wisconsin and Andrew Ogles of Tennessee introduced Republican legislation in October that would bar Palestinian arrivals. It would prevent Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas from using his “parole” powers to let in Palestinians, as he did for Afghans and Ukrainians fleeing their home countries.
Republicans doubt the asylum process could distinguish between dangerous refugees and hard workers.
Those fears have been bolstered by the arrest of Sohaib S. Abuayyash, which authorities announced Friday.
The FBI said Mr. Abuayyash has a “radical mindset” and was training with weapons “to possibly commit an attack.” He was charged with possessing a firearm as a foreigner without permanent legal status.
The FBI said Mr. Abuayyash first came to the U.S. in 2016, when he would have been about 13, on a tourism visa. He left after about 2½ months but returned in June 2019, when he would have been about 16, on another tourist visa. He used a Palestinian passport to enter.
Mr. Abuayyash was supposed to leave at the end of July but did not and became an illegal immigrant.
In 2020, he filed an asylum claim saying he was a citizen of Jordan. The asylum claim appears to be pending, but he was granted a permit this summer to work legally in the U.S. for two years.
Ordering him detained pending trial, the judge indicated that Mr. Abuayyash lacks legal status and has a history of violence or weapons use and said the evidence against him was strong.
“Through the logical course of the investigation, it was discovered that Abuayyash has been in direct contact with others who share a radical mindset, has been conducting physical training, and has trained with weapons to possibly commit an attack,” FBI Special Agent Keith Fogg wrote in an affidavit justifying the arrest.
Authorities said Mr. Abuayyash posted a social media video of himself with rifles and handguns shooting at an orange human silhouette target at a firing range in Texas. The video is captioned “Is it halal to marry a piece of weapon?” Halal is Arabic for “permitted.”
A federal grand jury in Texas indicted Mr. Abuayyash on Thursday on a charge of illegal gun possession.
Some high-profile lawmakers have urged the administration to root out pro-Hamas migrants inside the U.S.
They point to language in the law that deems a foreigner who endorses terrorist activity to be “inadmissible” from outside the U.S. and deportable if inside the country. Those in the U.S. on student visas who demonstrated in support of Hamas after the Oct. 7 sneak attack on Israel have proved to be particularly juicy targets for ouster calls.
Mr. Mayorkas told Congress last week that his team is studying the idea.
“It is a matter of legal interpretation of the statute,” he said in testimony to the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
George Fishman, a former congressional aide who wrote immigration law, said he thinks the idea is legal.
Although the First Amendment protects people from government punishment for exercising free speech, he said, the Supreme Court “has made clear that deportation does not equate to punishment.”
Mr. Fishman, now with the Center for Immigration Studies, said the justices would likely uphold the deportation of an illegal immigrant and a foreign student with a legal temporary visa. It would be a tougher sell to try to deport a legal permanent resident.
He said Mr. Mayorkas should at least try.
“At the top of the priority list should be those foreign students who have endorsed or espoused the genocidal views of [Students for Justice in Palestine] chapters justifying the slaughter of every Jewish man, woman, and child living in Israel as ‘settlers’ and ‘loungers’ who are fair game for death in pursuit of the ‘liberation’ of Palestine,” Mr. Fishman wrote.
Immigrant rights groups have largely shied away from the debate. The Times reached out to several groups for this report but didn’t receive responses.
Palestinian advocates have labeled the Republican proposals racist.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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