Homeland Security at a loss to elucidate hiring of former PLO official for work on asylum instances

Homeland Security lacked solutions Thursday to piercing questions on how a lady who labored for a delegated terrorist group and espoused virulent anti-Israel guidelines was employed to resolve delicate asylum instances — and senior former officers urged the division to evaluation each case she dealt with to appropriate her bias.

The worker, Nejwa Ali, was placed on depart late Wednesday by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the division’s authorized immigration division, after her previous work for the Palestine Liberation Organization and her anti-Israel social media posts had been uncovered.

Two males who ran USCIS in previous administrations stated the company now must do some deeper soul-searching to cleanse itself of the shameful hiring of Ms. Ali.

“Given the seriousness of having a PLO asset and Hamas supporter adjudicating asylum and other immigration cases, I would think that a forensic review of all her cases is urgently needed,” stated Emilio Gonzalez, who was director of USCIS within the Bush administration.

Ken Cuccinelli, who was appearing director at USCIS after which appearing deputy secretary at Homeland Security within the Trump administration, stated Ms. Ali must be fired and her instances must be rechecked “with appropriate adjustments made to the outcomes, to the extent the law allows.”

He additionally stated USCIS must reply for the way it got here to make use of her within the first place.

“This shows an unbelievable lack of vetting on the part of the department and of USCIS,” he stated. “Given the mission of managing legal immigration, this woman is clearly not qualified and should be immediately fired.”

The Washington Times has realized that the House Homeland Security Committee will probe each Ms. Ali’s hiring and her work on delicate asylum instances.

The Daily Wire first reported on Ms. Ali and her historical past, together with her now-cleansed LinkedIn web page the place stated she had labored in 2016 and 2017 as a public affairs officer for the “Palestinian Delegation to the U.S.,” which was the PLO’s workplace in Washington.

Ms. Ali additionally had a prolonged historical past of anti-Israeli feedback on-line, together with cheering on Hamas’s savage invasion of Israel earlier this month.

Her posts particularly celebrated Hamas paragliders who had been despatched into Israel to safe spots in preparation for floor fighters’ incursion. As just lately as Wednesday, Ms. Ali informed the Daily Wire she “will abso-[EXPLETIVE]-lutely celebrate them,” in keeping with audio the reporter posted on social media platform X.

Congress designated the PLO a terrorist group in 1987, although it was granted a presidential waiver to proceed to function its workplace in Washington. The Trump administration withdrew that waiver and the workplace shuttered in 2018.

Experts stated having Ms. Ali working asylum instances can be equal to having a member of the Irish Republican Army or a vitriolic white supremacist reviewing instances, which is why her work must be reviewed.

USCIS didn’t reply to a request for remark for this story, however after the preliminary report about Ms. Ali in The Daily Wire, the company denounced her feedback.

“USCIS strongly condemns antisemitism and the use of violent rhetoric in any form,” spokesperson Matthew Bourke stated Wednesday. “USCIS employees are held to high ethical standards both on and off duty, including their presence on social media. Any violation of these standards is taken seriously by the agency.”

Hours later, Mr. Bourke introduced Ms. Ali was on depart.

Firing her can be a lot more durable, in keeping with Rob Law, who served because the company’s coverage chief within the Trump administration and who stated it might take as much as a yr to oust her due to civil service protections.

“USCIS absolutely needs to review all cases she handled given her clear animus,” stated Mr. Law, who now runs the Center for Homeland Security and Immigration on the America First Policy Institute. “This situation is an indictment of the federal hiring process.”

Ms. Ali is the newest black eye for USCIS.

Two years in the past federal prosecutors charged an worker with having lied on his naturalization paperwork. They stated Karl Ifemembi first gained standing within the U.S. in 2000 via a bogus asylum declare, then in 2010 gained citizenship underneath that id. Three years later USCIS — the very company he had defrauded — employed him underneath that very same false id.

Making issues worse, his spouse labored at USCIS as an anti-fraud officer.

Authorities have additionally uncovered a large fraud ring being run with the assistance of two USCIS contractors who labored for the company abroad, and who used their entry to steal and promote deeply delicate knowledge on Iraqi refugee candidates.

That led to the Iraq program being shuttered for greater than a yr.

According to Ms. Ali’s LinkedIn web page, she began working at USCIS in July 2019, throughout the Trump administration, lower than two years after leaving the PLO’s workplace.

The company’s asylum division at the moment was run by John Lafferty. Mr. Cuccinelli would later take away Mr. Lafferty from the highest asylum publish, however he was reinstalled within the job final November by the Biden administration and present Director Ur Jaddou.

Mr. Lafferty didn’t reply to an e mail inquiry about Ms. Ali’s hiring.

The president of the labor union that represents USCIS’s rank-and-file immigration officers stated he couldn’t touch upon personnel issues concerning particular person members.

Ms. Ali informed The Daily Wire that her private views didn’t have an effect on her job efficiency.