Refugee Vetting Quotes

Anne Richard, a senior U.S. State Department official, testified at a Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing in November 2015 that any Syrian refugee trying to get into the United States is scrutinized by officials from the National Counterterrorism Center, FBI, Department of Homeland Security, State Department and Pentagon.

President Obama's own administration has publicly admitted that under the current framework, Syrian refugees cannot be vetted in a way that meets the rigorous security standards we rightfully expect.

Obama and his Democrat allies in Congress have proven they will use bait-and-switch tactics to move more unvetted refugees into our communities. This will inevitably put our nation and our citizens at risk for future terrorist attacks.

Refugees are not terrorists. They are the victims of terrorists .... In my experience people with terrorist intent do not choose the reugee route to enter a country. There is too much scruiteny and takes too long. They use ofher ways.

Chris Christie who proposes accepting Syrian refugee orphans under the age of 5 because they may not be vetted well enough. You can't trust them. The 5-year-olds might it be terrorists. After all, they're from Syria.

Since when can somebody tell me a time or a case where there has been a Syrian refugee in this country who has committed an act of terror?

Honestly, if they were Christian refugees coming in, I think the Obama administration would vet them a little more toughly.

Hillary and I will do immigration enforcement and we'll vet refugees based on whether they're dangerous or not. We won't do it based on discriminating against you from the country you come from or the religion that you practice.

What's going on in Syria is the worst humanitarian crisis since World War II. And we are punishing those who are suffering most in this circumstance, in this condition. We vet refugees from Syria for a period of 18 to 24 months before they're allowed to come to the United States. And, you know, if you will permit me, I think we know more about them by the time they get here than we know about the president's finances.

I'm concerned, too, about ISIS' ability, right, to infiltrate people. But we have got some very effective, robust processes for vetting people. We brought in thousands of Iraqi refugees after the Iraq War. Not a single one has ever turned out to be a terrorist because the vetting was so good.

Hillary Clinton and I will do immigration enforcement and we'll vet refugees based on whether they're dangerous or not, we won't do it based on discriminating against you from the country you come from or the religion that you come from.

On the Gang of Eight bill, there was no provisions really for extra scrutiny or safety for refugees. At the time the bill came up, two Iraqi refugees came to my home town, Bowling Green, Kentucky. Their fingerprints were on a bomb from Iraq. They were in the database, but we didn't pick them up.

Our process inside the United States government has gotten much better at making sure we touch all possible source of information about a refugee. The interview process has gotten more robust, so we've gotten our act together in that respect. The challenge remains, especially with respect to folks coming from Syria, we're unlikely to have anything in our holdings. That is, with people coming from Iraq, the United States government was there for a very long period of time. We had biometrics, we had source information. We're unlikely to have that kind of picture about someone coming from Syria.

President [Barack] Obama and Hillary Clinton are proposing bringing tens of thousands of Syrian refugees to this country when the head of the FBI has told Congress they cannot vet those refugees.

I think we need to do two things - or three things. One is we need to put a stop on refugees until we can vet.

As far as the refugees are concerned, it's not that America doesn't want to accept refugees.t's that we may not be able to, because this is an issue we have to be 100 percent right on. If we allow 9,999 Syrian refugees into the United States, and all of them are good people, but we allow one person in who's an ISIS killer - we just get one person wrong, we've got a serious problem.

As far as other people like in the migration, where they're going, tens of thousands of people having cell phones with ISIS flags on them? I don't think so.They're not coming to this country.And if I'm president and if Obama has brought some to this country, they are leaving. They're going. They're gone.

The United States has already experienced the danger of flawed refugee vetting as well as the potential for refugees to be radicalized once they are here. In 2011, two Iraqi refugees were arrested in Kentucky for conspiracy to kill U.S. nationals abroad in support of al-Qaeda in Iraq, the predecessor to ISIL.

I will suspend immigration from regions comprised of radical Islamic terrorists, including the suspension of the Syrian refugee program which is taking in thousands and thousands of people that we have no idea where they come from, no idea who they are.

It is lunacy to be bringing refugees into this country who may be terrorists trying to murder Americans.

We have testimony saying, and I think common sense also dictates, that in a failed state like Syria, you don't have any government information, police reports to rely on to vet somebody. So there's no way to do a background check from somebody coming out of Syria. There's no way we can find out whether they're safe or not.