Three More Candidates for the Naturalization Hall of Shame

By Dan Cadman on April 24, 2015

Over the course of months, I've been blogging about for candidates to the naturalization "hall of shame", consisting of individuals who should never have been granted American citizenship and make it abundantly, painfully, and embarrassingly clear that is the case by perpetrating heinous acts. These acts have consisted of war crimes, murder, terrorism, espionage, and sundry other offenses. (See, for instance, here and here.)

Even though my scrutiny of candidates has a lot of built-in limitations, depending as it usually does on widespread media coverage to bring them to the public eye, the hall has grown by leaps and bounds; one might even call it a "gallery of shame" at this point.

The past three-or-so weeks have brought a host of new gallery of shame candidates to light.

  • First there was Ethiopian-born Wossen Assaye, a naturalized citizen and serial bank robber alleged to be responsible for at least 12 bank robberies over the course of a couple of years. According to news reports, when arrested by FBI agents after his last heist, Assaye overpowered a hospital security guard and carjacked two individuals in vehicles before being re-apprehended. And, despite his father's protestations of dismay at the arrest of his upstanding son, this apparently was not his first brush with the law. Virginia Department of Corrections records show that he was denied parole on July 20, 2012, reflecting that he had an extensive criminal past and a history of violence. (See the last name on p. 45 here.) The timing is such that he must have begun robbing banks shortly after his eventual release.

  • Then there was Somali-born Abdirahman Sheik Mohamud, whom the news reports repeatedly referred to as an "Ohio man" or a "Columbus man". One had to dig a bit to discover the news that he had only been naturalized about a year before his arrest on charges of money laundering and supporting terrorism. He was initially indicted for these crimes by Ohio state authorities, which was odd, and it was only later that similar federal charges were brought. The charges allege he (and apparently his brother) traveled to Syria and received terrorist training. He returned to the United States and began his terror support and recruitment activities, with the aim of engaging in Fort Hood-style acts of murder against police and soldiers at an unidentified "military base in Texas".

  • Finally we have a cornucopia of six Somali-born citizens charged with planning to join the Islamic State in the Levant (ISIL) as terrorists: Abdirahman Yasin Daud and Mohamed Abdihamid Farah (arrested in San Diego while attempting to pick up forged papers to leave the country) and Zacharia Yusuf Abdurahman, Adnan Farah, Hanad Mustafe Musse, and Guled Ali Omar (arrested in Minneapolis). All six were apparently inspired and recruited over the Internet by that pillar of American citizenship, Abdi Nur, a dedicated terrorist for ISIL presently fighting in Syria (or perhaps Iraq), having drifted there from Minneapolis.

Stunningly, the Los Angeles Times quotes U.S. Attorney Andrew Luger of Minneapolis this way about the arrests: "'It's clear we have a problem,' said Luger of the large number of Minnesota residents who have traveled abroad. 'This problem is not a Somali problem. It's not an immigrant problem. ... It's a Minnesota problem.'"

This is political correctness run amok. Does Mr. Luger not understand the connection between failed immigration, naturalization, and assimilation policies on one hand, and terror on the other?