The Nov. 13 terrorist attacks on Paris have many Americans wondering, just how safe is our country right now?
Lawmakers across the country have taken sides on the refugee debate, either saying that the U.S. should welcome refugees or that it should refuse to accept any refugees for fear that terrorists would slip in undetected.
After all, many people are arguing, a group like ISIS clearly isn’t afraid to get creative with its strategies for infiltrating a country. ISIS seems just as likely to use a vehicle-born improvised explosive device (VBIED) of up to 22.5 tons in weight as it is likely to win over converts through propaganda videos distributed on social media.
Although immigration has always been a hot topic in Arizona, it’s not exactly commonplace to encounter immigrants from countries like Syria and Pakistan.
As the International Business Times and CBS News reported, a handful of refugees from the Middle East have already been caught trying to cross the border.
In Arizona, six men from Afghanistan and Pakistan were recently apprehended by the U.S. Border Patrol in Sonoita. The news came just after eight Syrians (two families, which included four children) presented themselves to Border Patrol authorities in order to claim asylum.
Even though ISIS has made extensive use of social media channels, as the Wall Street Journal recently noted, it is notoriously difficult for experts to pin down exactly which tactics the group uses for each of its attacks. This has led to a general fear that the group could very well be planting agents in Western countries through complex refugee resettlement networks.
It is currently still too early to tell if the federal government will establish more lenient guidelines for legitimate refugees fleeing ISIS, or if it will clamp down on all immigration into the U.S.