Obama Stopped Processing Iraqi Refugee Requests In 2011 Due To Security Concerns

But now he says it would be “un-American.”

by Hannity.com Staff

President Obama has offered some heated rhetoric in response to suggestions that the U.S. might want to reconsider it’s policy as it concerns accepting refugees from Syria. The president has called Republican plans to put a hold on accepting Syrian refugees a “potent recruitment tool” for ISIS and “un-American.”

Just today, the President tweeted out:

But this wasn’t always the president’s attitude. As it turns out, what the president calls un-American has been part of his administration’s policy.

The Obama administration actually stopped processing Iraqi refugee requests for six months after two Iraqi-refugees were arrested on terrorism charges in Bowling Green, Kentucky in 2011.

As TheFederalist.com points out, the U.S. State Department stopped processing the requests from Iraqi refugees in order to review and revamp security screening procedures. In 2013 ABC News wrote:

As a result of the Kentucky case, the State Department stopped processing Iraq refugees for six months in 2011, federal officials told ABC News – even for many who had heroically helped U.S. forces as interpreters and intelligence assets. One Iraqi who had aided American troops was assassinated before his refugee application could be processed, because of the immigration delays, two U.S. officials said. In 2011, fewer than 10,000 Iraqis were resettled as refugees in the U.S., half the number from the year before, State Department statistics show.

So, President Obama slammed the door in the face of the very Iraqis who put their lives on the line to aid us during operation Iraqi freedom.

The Federalist’s Sean Davis asked the relevant question here: