Washington Examiner | Aug. 17, 2018
The arrest this week of an Islamic State fighter in California, and a Yazidi woman’s experience in Germany, are evidence of ISIS’ successful infiltration of the West.
In the U.S. case, Omar Ameen was detained by the FBI after being identified as an ISIS fighter who participated in attacks in Iraq. In the German case, a young Yazidi woman who was previously held captive and repeatedly raped by the Islamic State told the BBC of her harrowing experience running into a former captor at a German supermarket. Both “Ashwaq” and her terrorizer, Abu Humam, apparently received refugee status from the German government. German authorities have been unable to trace Humam, almost certainly due to his possession of forged or manipulated identity documents.
Yet, regardless of what this means for refugee policies (I believe the West should heavily preference applications from women and children, not working-age men), these two stories evidence one simple, troubling fact: ISIS is in the West.