DHS72 DHS employees were found to be on the terrorist watch-list

Workflow chart of federal vetting process // Source: gao.gov

Representative Stephen Lynch (D-Massachusetts) was among the forty-seven Democrats who supported a GOP bill to tighten screening requirements for Syrian and Iraqi refugees. In an interview with Jim Braude and Margery Eagan of WGBH Boston Public Radio, he explained his decision – and also revealed that a DHS IG investigation found that seventy-two DHS employees were on the terrorist watch list.

Here are a few questions and answers from the interview:

Margery Eagan: Let’s start with the vote on the Syrian refugees. Why were you with those forty-seven other Democrats?
Stephen Lynch: It’s a very simple bill, I know that it’s got subsumed within a larger discussion about immigration policy, but basically, the bill we voted on was a very short bill — four pages in length, basically, and it said that the director of national security shall review the vetting process as being conducted by both the FBI and the department of homeland security. Because of the disastrous results we’ve had so far with the screening process, especially the department of homeland security, I think it was a very good idea to have another set of eyeballs looking at that process.

Back in August, we did an investigation — the Inspector General did — of the Department of Homeland Security, and they had seventy-two individuals that were on the terrorist watch list that were actually working at the Department of Homeland Security. The director had to resign because of that. Then we went further and did and eight-airport investigation. We had staffers go into eight different airports to test the department of homeland security screening process at major airports. They had a 95 percent failure rate. We had folks — this was a testing exercise, so we had folks going in there with guns on their ankles, and other weapons on their persons, and there was a 95 percent failure rate.