ISIS Beheaded the Priest, France

Posted on July 26, 2016July 26, 2016 by Denise Simon

Daesh is no longer a small extremist group fighting in Syria and Iraq. It has become the most globalised Islamist terror group. Any world leaders willing to declare this including the White House or the U.S. State Department?

One of the nuns stated the Priest was forced to kneel before the terrorist.

Yesterday #Isis affiliated channels were disseminating under the hashtag #TheArmyOfLoneWolves simple, but lethal ways & methods to kill.

French President Hollande says attack at church outside Rouen carried out by “terrorists who claimed allegiance to ISIS.” According to French media Le Figaro, the two attackers slit the throat of a priest in the Church. Besides the slain priest, two nuns and two churchgoers had been taken hostage, CNN French affiliate BFMTV reported.

“today a church tomorrow a hospital…there are no red lines, it’s tit 4 tat 4m Isis.We deal back in kind.”

The hostage killed in the Saint Etiennedu Rouvray church attack was a priest: Rev. Jacques Hamel, age 84.

The attacker who spent time in French jail was under electronic bracelet surveillance after trying to go to Syria in 2015. The Pope is ‘pain and horror’ at France church hostage-taking according to a statement by the Vatican.

Anti-terrorism judges are to probe French church hostage-taking per the prosecutor, and both attackers are dead, shot by police.

There were reports the attackers shouted ‘Allahu Akbar’ as they ran outof the church while at least one of the men was dressed in Islamic clothing. It comes as it emerged that the building was one of a number of Catholic churches on a terrorist ‘hit list’ found on a suspected ISIS extremist last April.

Official statement by Francois Hollande:

The most recent travel warning issued by the U.S. State Department due to recent terror attacks was for Turkey, nothing for France. As of the posting of this article, there have been no official statements from John Kerry or the White House.

Europe’s Training Programs the US can Use

Posted on July 25, 2016July 25, 2016 by Denise Simon

At least this is forward thinking both in Germany and in the United Kingdom. By launching these programs, it is actually a declaration of terror problems in Europe and these are positive steps. Do you wonder if our own DHS or FEMA have a response on this? So do I.

German military training 100 Syrian migrants in pilot project

Reuters: The German military is training more than 100 Syrian migrants for civilian roles suited to helping the eventual reconstruction of their country, Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen said in remarks released ahead of publication on Sunday.

Von der Leyen told the Frankfurter Allgemeine daily that the pilot program was focused on training migrants in a variety of areas such as technology, medicine and logistics.

It was not immediately clear if von der Leyen planned to expand the program to include more of the one million migrants who arrived in Germany last year.

“The idea is that they will go back to Syria one day and help with the reconstruction” of their war-shattered country, von der Leyen told the newspaper.

She said Germany could also play a role in training Syrian security forces once it had a responsible government.

Syrian refugees can carry out civilian tasks for the German military, but are not eligible to work as soldiers, she said.

Von der Leyen sparked controversy within her own Christian Democratic party recently when she suggested that EU citizens could in certain cases take over armed roles in the German military. The defense minister also advocates greater diversity in the German military and moves to recruit more immigrants.

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More than 500,000 public sector workers put through Prevent counter-terror training in bid to spot extremism

Exclusive: Training courses criticised as ‘inadequate’ while the strategy has been described as divisive

IndependentUK: More than half a million nurses, teachers, childminders and other frontline public sector workers have been put through a mass counter-terrorism training programme to help them spot and report potential extremists in their workplaces.

The Home Office has confirmed that of the 550,000 now trained in the controversial Prevent strategy, at least 150,000 are public-facing NHS staff, such as doctors and nurses.

They have all completed various online or classroom exercises to comply with a statutory Prevent duty that was forced on a wide range of public authorities by Theresa May as Home Secretary last year.

Aimed mainly at tackling Islamist extremists and far right white supremacists, it is one of the biggest counter-terror awareness programmes ever undertaken by the UK Government.

Some in the Muslim community and beyond feel Prevent is divisive; it creates a “climate of suspicion” and is an attempt to create a huge network of spies.

The training courses themselves, particularly those online, are also being criticised as “inadequate” and an exercise in box ticking that is not being taken seriously enough by attendees.

Under the Prevent strand of the Government’s counter-terror strategy, Contest, extremism is defined as “vocal or active opposition to fundamental British values, including democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty and mutual respect and tolerance of different faiths and beliefs”.

Anyone who “calls for the death of members of our armed forces” is also an extremist, according to the policy.

The Prevent duty requires a large range of public sector workers to be trained and also includes college lecturers, youth and social workers, probation officers and childcare providers.

But many Prevent trainees have simply clicked through online tutorials recommended by a Home Office catalogue.

Although most of the online courses are free and take about an hour to complete, one provider charges up to £30 a head for a module that uses a snakes and ladders game to teach people about paths to radicalisation.

Another provider listed on the Government’s Gov.uk website charges safeguarding officers in higher education £500 a head for a two-day classroom workshop.

Another course teaches people how to spot far right extremism by training social workers and police and probation officers for signs of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.

Under the programme, people are taught how to spot the signs that someone maybe becoming radicalised.

These might be “reports of unusual behaviour, friendships or actions and request for assistance”, according to NHS documents.

Other signs could be “patients or staff accessing extremist material online”, or “artwork or literature promoting violent extremist messages or images”.

The Government wants to teach staff to contact their authority’s designated “Prevent lead” when they have concerns about an individual, such as a student or even a patient.

The Prevent lead will alert the police whenever the risk is deemed immediate or substantiated.

Prevent was introduced by the last Labour government, but it was transformed under Ms May. She widened its scope to include non-violent extremism in 2011 when she also encouraged many authorities to start training programmes.

Between 2011 and 2015, some 300,000 public sectors had received a form of training.

But The Independent has discovered that figure has now almost doubled as a result of the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act, which Ms May drove through last year.

The Home Office says that as a result of Ms May’s work, 1,000 people have been referred to the Government’s Channel initiative which tries to de-radicalise individuals.

Earlier this month, the Government’s education watchdog Ofsted warned that some schools and colleges were being too slow in complying with the Prevent duty.

But the Muslim Council of Britain, which has long opposed Prevent, said the mass training of public sector workers risked being “counterproductive”.

A spokesman said: “We need to be vigilant given the real threat of terrorism, and we therefore support effective measures to identify and report terrorist activity.

“However, we are not convinced about the effectiveness of a programme requiring hundreds of thousands of people to look for signs of what they perceive to be behaviour that potentially leads to terrorism. We are instead likely to see many false flags in an inconsistent approach that is applied in a discriminatory way.

“This runs the risk of being –as the parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights said on Friday –counterproductive to our goal of a safe and secure nation.”

The campaign group Students Not Suspects, who say the Prevent strategy unfairly targets black and Muslim students, said in a YouTube video in April: “The Prevent duty under the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act forces colleges and universities to spy on students. They’ll say this is to safeguard students but in reality it is creating a climate of suspicion around students’ political and religious views.

“Prevent is silencing students, promoting a culture of surveillance and self-censorship and undermining our universities and colleges as spaces for free and rigorous debate.”

Hillary’s VP, Kaine and the Muslim Brotherhood

Posted on July 25, 2016July 25, 2016 by Denise Simon

Clinton VP Pick Tim Kaine’s Islamist Ties

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s newly-announced running mate, Virginia Senator Tim Kaine, has a history of embracing Islamists.

Clarion: Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s newly-announced running mate, Virginia Senator Tim Kaine, has a history of embracing Islamists. He appointed a Hamas supporter to a state immigration commission; spoke at a dinner honoring a Muslim Brotherhood terror suspect and received donations from well-known Islamist groups.

A worldwide Islamist organization founded in Egypt in 1928 by Hassan al-Banna that seeks to implement Sharia-based governance globally.

Appointing a Muslim Brotherhood Front Leader Who Supports Hamas

In 2007, Kaine was the Governor of Virginia and, of all people chose Muslim American Society (MAS) President Esam Omeish to the state’s Immigration Commission. A Muslim organization against Islamism criticized the appointment and reckless lack of vetting.

The interpretation of Islam as a governmental system in which strict Sharia law must be enforced; synonymous with Political Islam.

Federal prosecutors said in a 2008 court filing that MAS was “founded as the overt arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in America.” A Chicago Tribune investigation in 2004 confirmed this, as well as MAS’ crafty use of deceptive semantics to appear moderate. Convicted terrorist and admitted U.S. Muslim Brotherhood member Abdurrahman Alamoudi testified in 2012, “Everyone knows that MAS is the Muslim Brotherhood.”

Read our fully-documented profile of MAS here.

According to Omeish’s website, he was also president of the National Muslim Students Association (click there to read our profile about its Muslim Brotherhood origins) and served for two years on the national board of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), which the Justice Department also labeled as a U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entity and unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas-financing trial.

His website says he was the vice president of Dar al-Hijrah Islamic Center, a radical mosque known for its history of terror ties, including having future Al-Qaeda operative Anwar Al-Awlaki as its imam and being frequented by two of the 9/11 hijackers and Nidal Hasan, the perpetrator of the Fort Hood shooting. Omeish’s website says he remains a board member.

Omeish’s website also says he was chairman of the board of Islamic American University, which had Hamas financier and Muslim Brotherhood spiritual leader Yousef Al-Qaradawi chairman of its board until at least 2006.

Omeish was also chairman of the board for the Islamic Center of Passaic County, a New Jersey mosque with heavy terrorist ties and an imam that the Department of Homeland Security wants to deport for having links to Hamas.

Omeish directly expressed extremism before Kaine appointed him. He claimed the Brotherhood is “moderate” and admitted that he and MAS are influenced by the Islamist movement.

In 2004, Omeish praised the Hamas spiritual leader as “our beloved Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.” Videotape from 2000 also surfaced where Omeish pledged to help Palestinians who understand “the jihad way is the way to liberate your land” (he denied this was an endorsement of violence).

A holy war waged against non-Muslims on behalf of Islam considered to be a religious duty; also, a personal struggle in devotion to Islam.

When a state delegate wrote a letter to then-Governor Kaine warning him that the MAS has “questionable origins,” a Kaine spokesperson said the charge was bigotry.

Kaine obviously failed to do any kind of basic background checking in Omeish.

Omeish resigned under heavy pressure, and Kaine acknowledged that his statements “concerned” him. But, apparently, they didn’t concern him enough to actually learn about the Muslim Brotherhood network in his state and to take greater precautions in the future.

Speaking at a Dinner Honoring Muslim Brotherhood Terror Suspect

In September 2011, Kaine spoke at a “Candidates Night” dinner organized by the New Dominion PAC that presented a Lifetime Achievement Award for Jamal Barzinji, who the Global Muslim Brotherhood Watch describes as a “founding father of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood.”

He first came on to the FBI’s radar in 1987-1988 when an informant inside the Brotherhood identified Barzinji and his associated groups as being part of a network of Brotherhood fronts to “institute the Islamic Revolution in the United States.” The source said Barzinji and his colleagues were “organizing political support which involves influencing both public opinion in the United States as well as the United States Government” using “political action front groups with no traceable ties.”

Barzinji had his home searched as part of a terrorism investigation in 2003. U.S. Customs Service Senior Special Agent David Kane said in a sworn affidavit that Barzinji and the network of entities he led were investigated because he “is not only closed associated with PIJ [Palestinian Islamic Jihad]…but also with Hamas.” Counter-terrorism reporter Patrick Poole broke the story that Barzinji was nearly prosecuted but the Obama Justice Department dropped plans for indictment.

Barzinji played a major role in nearly every Brotherhood front in the U.S. and was vice president of the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT), which came under terrorism investigation also. Barzinji’s group was so close to Palestinian Islamic Jihad operative Sami Al-Arian that IIIT’s President considered his group and Al-Arian’s to be essentially one entity.

The indictment of Al-Arian and his colleagues says that they “would and did seek to obtain support from influential individuals, in the United States under the guise of promoting and protecting Arab rights (emphasis mine).”

The quotes about Brotherhood operative Barzinji’s aspirations to use civil rights advocacy as a means to influence politicians are especially relevant when you consider that video from the event honoring Barzinji shows Kaine saying that it was his fourth time at the annual dinner and thanked his “friends” that organized it for helping him in his campaign for lieutenant-governor and governor and asked them to help his Senate campaign.

Islamist Financial Support

Barzinji’s organization, IIIT, donated $10,000 in 2011 to the New Dominion PAC, the organization that held the event honoring Barzinji that Kaine spoke at. The Barzinji-tied New Dominion PAC donated $43,050 to Kaine’s gubernatorial campaign between 2003 and 2005. That figure doesn’t even include other political recipients that assisted Kaine’s campaign.

The PAC has very strong ties to the Democratic Party in Virginia, with the Virginia Public Access Project tallying almost $257,000 in donations. This likely explains why Barzinji’s grandson served in Governor McAuliffe’s administration and then became the Obama Administration’s liaison to the Muslim-American community.

The Middle East Forum’s Islamist Money in Politics database shows another $4,300 donated to Kaine’s Senate campaign in 2011-2012 by officials from U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entities Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). Another $3,500 came from Hisham Al-Talib, a leader from Barzinji’s IIIT organization.

It’s worth noting that Barzinji’s IIIT donated $3,500 to Esam Omeish’s 2009 campaign delegate campaign, tying together the cadre of Muslim Brotherhood-linked leaders who got into Kaine’s orbit.

Conclusion

Kaine has no excuse. If he has an Internet connection, then he and his staff should have known about their backgrounds. They were either extremely careless (something Kaine would have in common with the top of the ticket) or knew and looked the other way in the hopes of earning donations and votes.

Clinton’s choice of Kaine is widely seen as a way of strengthening her campaign’s national security credentials. Yet, Clinton is asking us to trust a candidate on national security who appoints a Hamas supporter to an immigration commission and speaks at a dinner honoring a Muslim Brotherhood terror suspect.

DNC Emails: Big Donors Get Big Jobs in Govt

Posted on July 25, 2016July 25, 2016 by Denise Simon

Votes kinda sorta matter but money, PAC’s, foreign contributions, big donors, bundlers matter more.

But it was not a good morning for Debbie Wasserman Schultz as she addressed Florida delegates.

DNC emails: Behind the scenes look at care of big donors

McClatchy: PHILADELPHIA: In May, after yet another State Dinner at the White House passed, major Democratic donor Cookie Parker dashed off a frustrated email that was forwarded to Democratic Party officials about her failure to receive any coveted invites or board appointments.

“I have been patient and not kicked up a stink because it is not my style. But as the Obama Administration winds down, I am feeling very down about this,” wrote Parker, founder and owner of KMS, a Los Angeles software company. “I raised a lot of money for the DNC for both cycles … and here I sit venting and feeling very much under appreciated.”

On another occasion, days before a coveted State Dinner for Nordic leaders, Democratic National Committee Chairman Debbie Wasserman Schultz asked White House officials if they could find an extra ticket for another major donor, Florida lawyer Mitchell Berger.

On yet another, Erik Stowe, the DNC finance director for Northern California, outlined benefits given to different tiers of donors to the Democratic convention: priority booking at high-end hotels and tickets to major convention events and exclusive VIP parties.

Those were among the examples of special care – and sometimes special scrutiny – of major donors that were in thousands of leaked emails hacked from the DNC.

Many showed that while the White House often denies donors are given special treatment, the donors demand and expect it. And staff at the Democratic National Committee worked to reward donors with tickets to White House events and seats next to President Barack Obama based on a contributor’s financial generosity, many times after they blatantly asked for perks.

I think the DNC needs to get to the bottom of the facts and then take appropriate action on any of these emails Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook on ABC

About 20,000 emails were released Friday by WikiLeaks, which provided a searchable database of correspondence of seven DNC officials between January 2015 to May 2016. McClatchy could not independently verify the emails.

The White House and the DNC did not respond to requests for comment. Berger said he was grateful that Wasserman Schultz tried to get him into a State Dinner, though she was unsuccessful and he still has never been. He said both Democrats and Republicans try to reward donors. “It’s not necessarily an unusual thing thing for political parties to do,” he said. “This is my 11th presidential election. It’s not unusual.”

Other donors could not be reached for comment Sunday.

The emails include those that raise questions about the organization’s impartiality during the Democratic presidential primary between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, which cost chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz her job Sunday, and show how the DNC coordinated its message with others and responded to inquiries from journalists, including those at McClatchy.

Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Waserman Schultz will no longer be given a major speaking role at the Democrats’ convention that starts Monday ion Philadephia

The emails also show several instances where Democratic staffers disagreed about which donor was more worthy of the reward.

In one exchange, National Finance Director Jordan Kaplan and Mid-Atlantic Finance Director Alexandra Shapiro argue which contributor should be allowed to sit next to Obama at a DNC event.

Kaplan told Shapiro to move Maryland ophthalmologist Sreedhar Potarazu and give the seat to New York philanthropist Philip Munger because he is the largest donor to Organizing for America, a group that pushes Obama’s policies. “It would be nice to take care of him from the DNC side,” Kaplan wrote.

But Shapiro explained that the Potarazu family had contributed $332,250 while Munger had only donated $100,600.

[Get the political buzz of the day, every day from McClatchy]

In another email, Michael Rapino, chief executive officer and president of Live Nation Entertainment, wrote that he assumed he received an invitation to the Nordic state dinner because he was not happy to be passed over the previous time.

“I know they are trying to make it up to me bc I would not donate to his party said I was done with demo party bc they should have invited me to the Canadian state dinner given I am Canadian,” he wrote to a consultant, who passed the message to the DNC.

On another occasion, the emails showed several DNC staffers busy searching for a photo from a 2015 Kennedy Center Honors reception of Obama and a donor. They couldn’t find one but the donor kept contacting them. The last email noted, “The donor just emails me again. Any news?”

Yet another email noted that Democrats were trying to connect with donor Gus Arnavat, who served in the Obama administration as the executive director for the United States on the Inter-American Development Bank and could help them meet other donors. “He is working with a group of ambassadors who want to be in Philadelphia and coordinate their own event,” DNC communications director Luis Miranda explains in an email to a convention official.

It just goes to show you their exact moral compass. I mean, they will say anything to be able to win this. I mean, this is time and time again, lie after lie Republican Donald Trump

In the hunt for dollars, the DNC was sometimes, but not always, willing to overlook potential donors with questionable backgrounds, the emails show.

The DNC approved the attendance of Roy Black, a Miami-based attorney who has represented singer Justin Bieber on a driving under the influence charge; the founder of the sexually-charged “Girls Gone Wild” video series; baseball star Alex Rodriguez in a 2013 steroid case; and conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh.

In a May 12, 2016, email, DNC finance assistant Karina Marquez asked the committee’s vetting operation to review Black as one of six possible hosts for an Obama event. Black was approved to host an Obama event in 2007.

Kevin Snowden, a DNC deputy compliance officer, wrote in a May 12, 2016 email that “the only issue is Roy Black. New issues have come up since his last vet in February 2016.” White House aide Bobby Schmuck agreed in a May 12 email that Black shouldn’t host the event but it would be “fine” for him to attend.

The DNC vetted George Lindemann Jr. after he was convicted of three counts of wire fraud in 1995 in connection with a federal investigation into insurance fraud and horse killing.

“Finance asked us to vet as potential POTUS host/donor,” Chadwick Rivard, senior research supervisor, compliance, for the DNC, wrote in a May 9, 2016, email to DNC staffers and Schmuck.

An email with summary research notes on Lindemann said that after serving 21 months in prison he “has attempted to rehabilitate his image with philanthropic activity” and has made “sizeable contributions to Democratic and Republican candidates, committees and PACs. A few of these contributions have been returned.”

Schmuck sent an email to Claytron Cox, a DNC regional finance director, and wrote that Lindemann, Jr., “fails for everything.”

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/election/article91623012.html#emlnl=Morning_Newsletter#storylink=cpy

Another Terror Attack in Germany, Risks in USA

Posted on July 24, 2016July 24, 2016 by Denise Simon

Al Qaeda chief urges kidnappings of Westerners for prisoner swaps

Al Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri has appeared in an audio interview calling on fighters to take Western hostages and exchange them for jailed jihadists, the monitoring service SITE Intelligence Group said on Sunday.

In recording posted online, Al-Zawahiri called on the global militant network to kidnap Westerners “until they liberate the last Muslim male prisoner and last Muslim female prisoner in the prisons of the Crusaders, apostates, and enemies of Islam,” according to SITE. More here from Reuters.

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A 21-year-old Syrian refugee was arrested on Sunday after killing a pregnant woman with a machete in Germany, the fourth violent assault on civilians in western Europe in 10 days, though police said it did not appear linked to terrorism.

The incident, however, may add to public unease surrounding Chancellor Angela Merkel’s open-door refugee policy that has seen over a million migrants enter Germany over the past year, many fleeing war in Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq.

German police said they arrested the machete-wielding Syrian asylum-seeker after he killed a woman and injured two other people in the southwestern city of Reutlingen near Stuttgart. Much more here from Newsweek.

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Related reading on NGO’s: UNHCR – Partnership in Resettlement

So what about the real vetting process in the United States you ask…..it is a great question.

After the Paris attacks, the White House called in 34 governors to discuss the policy and vetting process of refugees into the United States. While we focus on ‘Syrian’ refugees, they hardly make up the majority and it is this fact that must be noted. Even so, the White House, 3 days later published a chart of the vetting program and it does have some gaps (questions) that too must be answered.

‎Refugees undergo more rigorous screening than anyone else we allow into the United States. Here’s what the screening process looks like for them:

The full text is found here from the White House.

The admission of refugees to the United States and their resettlement here are authorized by the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), as amended by the Refugee Act of 1980. The INA defines a refugee as a person who is outside his or her country and who is unable or unwilling to return because of persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion. In special circumstances, a refugee also may be a person who is within his or her country and who is persecuted or has a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion. The maximum annual number of refugee admissions (refugee ceiling) and the allocation of these numbers by region of the world are set by the President after consultation by Cabinet-level representatives with members of the House and the Senate Judiciary Committees.

The Department of State’s (DOS’s) Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration (PRM) is responsible for coordinating and managing the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program. Prospective refugees can be referred to the U.S. program by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), a U.S. embassy, or a designated nongovernmental organization (NGO), or in some cases, they can access the U.S. refugee program directly. PRM generally arranges for an NGO, an international organization, or U.S. embassy contractors to manage a Resettlement Support Center (RSC) that assists in refugee processing.

Following the consultations, the President issues a Presidential Determination that sets the refugee ceiling and regional allocations for that fiscal year. Once the Presidential Determination for a fiscal year has been issued, INA Section 207 also allows for additional refugee admissions in response to an “emergency refugee situation.” In such a situation, the President may, after congressional consultation, issue an Emergency Presidential Determination providing for an increase in refugee admissions numbers.

For FY2016, the Obama Administration initially proposed a refugee ceiling of 75,000 and held consultations with Congress on that proposal. The proposal reportedly included an allocation of 33,000 for the Near East/South Asia, the region that includes Syria.5 The Administration subsequently announced that the United States would admit at least 10,000 Syrian refugees in FY2016. On September 29, 2015, the Obama Administration released the Presidential Determination on Refugee Admissions for Fiscal Year 2016.6 It sets the FY2016 refugee ceiling at 85,000, with 79,000 admissions numbers allocated among the regions of the world and 6,000 admissions numbers comprising an unallocated reserve.7 The allocation for the Near East/South Asia region is 34,000.

Actual Admissions

In FY2015, the United States admitted 69,933 refugees. The Near East/South Asia region accounted for 24,579 admissions, of which 1,682 were Syrian refugees. In the first month of FY2016 (October 2015), total refugee admissions were 5,348, Near East/South Asia region admissions were 1,979, and Syrian admissions were 187. From October 1, 2010, through October 31, 2015, the United States admitted a total of 2,070 Syrian refugees.

Role of the Department of Homeland Security

USCIS adjudicates refugee applications and makes decisions about eligibility for refugee status. USCIS officers in the Refugee Corps interview each applicant in person and consider other evidence and information to determine whether the individual is eligible for refugee status. More comprehensive reading here.