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House Majority Whip Tom Emmer says a string of recent terrorist attacks by naturalized citizens exposes serious flaws in U.S. immigration law, arguing it’s “more imperative now than ever” to pass the Stop Citizenship Abuse and Misrepresentation (SCAM) Act to allow the government to remove “America-hating terrorists” from the country.
First introduced by Emmer in January, the SCAM Act would expand the U.S. government’s ability to revoke citizenship from naturalized citizens convicted of being involved in terrorism, fraud or espionage. The Senate version of the bill was introduced by Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo.
“This has to be dealt with,” Emmer, a Minnesota Republican, told Fox News Digital.
“If you’re going to take advantage of the generosity of Americans, or you are going to associate with known terrorist organizations or commit aggravated felonies or terrorist attacks, even attempted, it doesn’t matter; no more playing games,” said Emmer. “You should be denaturalized and shipped back to wherever the heck you came from.”
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He lamented that under current law, “the standards to denaturalize someone are just too high,” but noted, “we have a solution to fix it.”
The bill, which on the House side currently sits in the House Judiciary Committee, allows prosecutors to use crimes committed after naturalization as evidence that an individual falsely claimed good moral character during the citizenship process, effectively arguing their citizenship was invalid from the start.
The SCAM Act already has nearly 50 House co-sponsors, according to Emmer. Once it is scheduled for a vote, he believes it will not have an issue passing and may even receive some bipartisan support from Democrats recognizing the gravity of the issue.
“It’s really simple,” he said. “The message is, terrorists do not belong on U.S. Soil, naturalized or not.”
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At the start of March, Senegalese-born naturalized citizen Ndiaga Diagne was killed by police after allegedly killing three people and injuring more than a dozen in a shooting in Austin, police said.
Not long after, Emir Balat and Ibrahim Kayumi, the children of naturalized citizens from Turkey and Afghanistan, allegedly pledged support to ISIS and attempted to bomb an anti-Islam demonstration outside the mayor’s mansion in New York City, according to police. They have been charged with attempting to provide material support to ISIS, attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction, and multiple explosives-related offenses including transporting, receiving and possessing destructive devices.
Then, on March 12, Ayman Mohamad Ghazali, a naturalized U.S. citizen originally from Lebanon, allegedly attempted to ram his vehicle into a Michigan synagogue filled with children and teachers, according to authorities.
The same day at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, Mohamed Bailor Jalloh, a naturalized citizen from Sierra Leone, allegedly opened fire on a class of Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) students, killing Lt. Col. Brandon Shah, according to police. He also was killed at the scene.
“Clearly something is broken in our immigration system,” said Emmer, adding that terrorists “keep getting into our country and they keep being allowed to stay here at the expense of Americans and American lives.”
“We can’t go on like this,” he went on, emphasizing, “It is more imperative now than ever that we get this thing done.”
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Despite this, Emmer has faced some opposition in Minnesota for his hardline stance.
Local outlet MPRNews reported a community activist leader in his district named Abdikadir Bashir, who is executive director of the nonprofit Center for African Immigrants and Refugees Organization, accusing Emmer of “trying to erase us politically.”
“The moment citizenship becomes conditional on whether a politician finds us convenient, none of us is safe,” Bashir said, according to the outlet. “Today, it might be the Somali Americans. Tomorrow, it could be another ethnic group.”
Though he declined to hazard a guess on a timeline of when the bill might be passed, he said that “as soon as possible would be my plea.”
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“We have an immigration system that is not requiring these people to actually declare their allegiance to the United States of America and their willingness to be Americans,” he said.
“We want anybody and everybody from anywhere who comes here to chase their American dream and become an American … we want you,” he concluded. “If you come here and you don’t intend to become an American, you intend to change America or destroy America, you need to get the heck out.”
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