Amine el-Khalifi is a Moroccan young man who came to the United States 14 years ago at the age of 16 on a tourist visa. He eventually overstayed his visa as thousands of others do each year and has resided illegally in the United States ever since.<\/p>\n
On Friday morning el-Khalifi was arrested on terrorism charges as part of an FBI sting. He was headed for the U.S. Capitol\u2019s visitor entrance wearing a bomb vest and holding a Mac 10 machine gun<\/a>. His intent was to kill as many people as possible in his suicide mission. El-Khalifi was engaged in what he thought was a suicide mission for al-Qaeda.<\/p>\n Thankfully, the FBI had been investigating el-Khalifi for about a year and their undercover operation ensured that whatever equipment had been given to el-Khalifi was inoperable.<\/p>\n According to press reports<\/a>, el-Khalifi had been preparing for this event for some time, even testing home made explosives in a quarry in West Virginia. What is most disconcerting is the fact that until his plans for terrorism came to the attention of federal authorities, el-Khalifi would have been eligible for the Obama Administration\u2019s new policy of administrative amnesty<\/a>, or potentially given U.S. citizenship through the DREAM Act. As someone whose only crime, in the eyes of the Administration, was that he was here illegally, he would have had a good chance of avoiding deportation proceedings.<\/p>\n While we applaud the efforts of our federal enforcement agencies in protecting this country, how long before another el-Khalifi tries and succeeds in carrying out a terrorist act? Of the 19 terrorists that carried out the 9-11 attacks against New York and Washington, at least 15 had overstayed their visitor visas and were in the country illegally<\/a>. Terrorists only need to get it \u2018right\u2019 once and it can come at a devastating expense to innocent lives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Amine el-Khalifi is a Moroccan young man who came to the United States 14 years ago at the age of 16 on a tourist visa. He eventually overstayed his visa as thousands of others do each year and has resided illegally in the United States ever since. On Friday morning el-Khalifi was arrested on terrorism<\/p>\n