On the recordJuly 21, 2015
I want to thank Chairman Royce and Ranking Member Engel. Also, I want to thank the cosponsors of this legislation--as mentioned earlier, it is an equal number of Republicans and Democrats--but especially Brad Sherman and William Keating on the minority side. Mr. Speaker, in 2015, the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, said that 180 Americans have tried to go fight in Syria, either for ISIS, Al Nusra, or some other Islamic extremist group. There may be more; we don't know. Americans citizens fighting for ISIS in Syria and Iraq are real, dangerous threats to the United States. These individuals are receiving training that makes them capable of sophisticated terrorist attacks, and they put themselves under the command and control of leaders in foreign places and leaders who want to attack the United States. This is not unique to the United States. As the chairman has mentioned earlier, the West--European countries--have this as a tremendous problem where their citizens go and fight in Syria; they are trained, and they come back and cause havoc in these countries in the West. It is not a hypothetical threat in the U.S., either. Moner Mohammad Abusalha was the first American to carry out a suicide bomb attack in Syria. Before he did so, he returned home to Florida as a fully trained terrorist. Our government had absolutely no idea. He was also a card- carrying member of al Qaeda, aligned to the Al Nusra front.…
