There's been a lot of empty chatter about "vetting" and "strong vetting" of refugees and immigrants from Muslim countries. But forget vetting. The odds of us succesfully vetting future terrorists are poor. But we do nothing when they come to our attention once they're in this country.
Sayfullo Saipov, the Muslim terrorist who left a trail of bodies along the West Side Highway in Manhattan, is another case in point.
Sayfullo Saipov, who has been charged with killing eight people in a vehicle attack on the West Side of Manhattan on Tuesday, was interviewed in 2015 by federal agents about possible ties to suspected terrorists but a case was never opened against him, law enforcement officials tell ABC News.
Saipov was listed as a “point of contact” for two men whose were listed in a Department of Homeland Security counterterrorism database and later overstayed their tourist visas, a federal official told ABC News. One was flagged after arriving from a so-called “threat country,” while the other vanished and was being actively sought by federal agents as a “suspected terrorist.” An official told ABC News that the FBI has since located him and he is not believed to have been involved in Tuesday’s attack.
Speaking on Wednesday, President Donald Trump noted that Saipov had served as the “point of contact” for 23 people. A source confirmed that number to ABC News but said it is unclear if those people are "immediate family members, distant family members, or friends.” Only those two men, however, were listed in the database
It wouldn't have mattered how much he was investigated.
Omar Mateen and Nidal Hasan did everything but take out, "I'm going to kill a bunch of people" ads in the paper. And nothing was done about them. As counterterrorism expert Patrick Poole calls it, Saipov was another "Known Wolf". And it's commonplace for Islamic terrorists, both here and in Europe, to have left a trail of incomplete investigations.
And nothing gets done.
About the only resource law enforcement has is to try and lure these guys into conversations with an informant, set them up with a plan and then nab them. And then the left shrieks entrapment and turns the likes of Ahmed Ferhani or James Cromitie into martyrs who were victimized by our racist law enforcement system that just wants to persecute innocent Muslims.
And so this keeps happening. Over and over again.
Forget vetting. We can't vet the guys already in America. We can't seem to vet them even when they announce, like Omar Mateen did, that they're terrorists. All our government seems to be able to do is keep letting them in and then letting them off until they finally kill.