Excerpted from FREE BEACON: The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is refusing to answer Congress’ questions about the existence of a secret terrorist “hands off” list that is said to have permitted individuals with terrorist ties easy entrance into the United States.
The existence of the hands-off list was first publicized earlier this month by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa), who released a cache of internal DHS emails detailing the list’s existence and a discussion about permitting an alleged member of the Muslim Brotherhood to enter the United States.
The revelation that individuals tied to terrorists were given special treatment drew outrage among lawmakers and led U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP), one of the agencies involved with the list, to hold a closed-door briefing with Grassley’s staff last week, according to a senior Senate source with knowledge of the meeting.
The Washington Free Beacon has further reported that the documents are part of a larger campaign by DHS and its former head Janet Napolitano to purge the internal security records of potentially hundreds of terror suspects, allowing them to more easily travel in and out of the United States.
When questioned by Grassley’s staff last week during the closed-door briefing, CBP officials refused to answer multiple questions about the purported “hands off” list, according to Grassley spokeswoman Beth Pellett Levine.
“The briefing on Tuesday yielded next to nothing,” Levine told the Free Beacon.
CBP officials would not address the specific emails detailing the “hands-off” list and maintained that no such record existed. Keep Reading
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