On Glenn Beck’s show, Cruz insisted that ISIS is in America, presumably referring to the roughly 242 Syrian refugees already settled in Texas, 90 in the Dallas area, none of whom appear to have caused any havoc yet.
Okay, fair enough: maybe Ted knows something we don’t. He claimed, for instance, that refugees from Syria couldn’t be properly vetted, but then went on to argue that the Obama administration has wrongly ignored the plight of Syrian Christian refugees, with only 3 percent of Syrian refugees admitted to the U.S. so far professing Christianity. (Only 12 percent of Syria’s total population was estimated to be Christian before war broke out in 2011, and no official data exists on how many Christians remain.)
It’s unclear how, if the U.N. and U.S. cannot vet Syrian refugees to rule out terrorist connections, they would be able to assure an individual’s Christianity. ISIS operatives sneaking into the United States masquerading as refugees would already be lying, and lying about religion seems like fair game if you’re maniacally intent on murdering Americans.
Nonetheless Cruz seems to believe some vetting process might be able to adequately suss out the Christians from the rest—so why not take that process and amend it slightly to suss out the innocent from the terrorists? Win-win.