As I listen to the news, I hear many references to people who left Europe to fight with ISIS, then returned to become terrorists. One CNN report said there are over 1500 such people in Europe, about 500 in the US.
My question: why are they allowed to return? Why don’t they lose their passport when they join the battle on the side of ISIS? They should not be allowed to re-enter.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
One would think.
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That’s a good question. But you have to remember that people don’t generally make a formal announcement of their intentions or renounce their citizenship when they travel to the Middle-East to fight for ISIS. People of Middle-Eastern descent who live in Europe frequently travel back to the the Middle-East and back for legitimate business or family reasons, so it’s not always easy to identify would-be Jihadists. Still, the intelligence services should do a better job of identifying potential ISIS recruits.
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An important question. I suppose there are not yet (if ever) perfected multi-national, multi-cultural indicators of ISIS membership–“conditions of specifiability, verifiability, and predictability” in identity. Until it is too late.
Maybe the question could be answered by gurus at the Clayton Christensen for Disruptive Innovation. They seem to think that the criteria of “conditions of specifiability, verifiability, and predictability” are really important in almost everything worth understanding and managing.
ISIS seems to offer some proof points for their convoluted theorizing, even if answers to the real world question may not be possible.
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CNN said there are 500 potential terrorists in USA 1500 in Europe . Wow CNN I am in “Shock and Awe” and still looking for the weapons of Mass Destruction your talking heads assured us were in Iraq.
ISIS is not a threat to the United States nor Europe they are a threat to Europeans and Americans. As they get squeezed in Syria and Iraq they become more desperate and small numbers of individuals can cause on the grand scale, small amounts of damage.
Think McVeigh and Terry Nichols. Devastating if you are an injured party but not going to bring a Nation to its knees.
However if there were 1500 ISIS fighters in Europe by this point Paris would look like Dresden and if there were 500 fighters in the USA we would see a hell of a lot more than one work place shooting, which in this country is a fairly common event even without ISIS.
If this is a “Class of Civilizations ” I would far prefer being a citizen of the West than of the Islamic World . . A year from now ISIS will be history destroyed by the people of the region with American and Russian!!!!!! assistance. Regime change in Syria ,Iraq and Libya may prove to have been a very noble ill thought out idea.
After the death of ISIS we will still be stuck with the McVeigh’s, the Breivik’s and the Farook’s
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Exactly! My question as well.
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“My question: why are they allowed to return? Why don’t they lose their passport when they join the battle on the side of ISIS? They should not be allowed to re-enter”
Answer: If you are a citizen you have the right to reenter the United States. The government has no right to deny entry to its citizens. Once they are back in the country, their passports can be confiscated.
But if you have committed a crime like fighting for ISIS, you may be classified as a terrorist and when you enter they can confiscate your passport, arrest you and prosecute you in a court of law and if found guilty put you in prison.
Recently, IRS (under Obama administration) has been granted the right to confiscate your passport if you owe them a large sum of taxes.
In most cases, since they do not have proof that you have participated in fighting against our interests, they will keep track of you once you arrive to catch you committing a crime and then arrest you.
Confiscation of your passport is not the the same as revoking your citizenship. It just means your right to travel abroad has been terminated.
“Although rare, it is possible for a naturalized U.S. citizen to have his or her citizenship stripped through a process called “denaturalization.” Former citizens who are denaturalized are subject to removal (deportation) from the United States. Natural-born U.S. citizens may not have their citizenship revoked against their will, but may choose to renounce their citizenship on their own.
http://immigration.findlaw.com/citizenship/can-your-u-s-citizenship-be-revoked-.html#sthash.ZZrWgJdr.dpuf
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I think they should be allowed back and then arrested and tried for treason.
By Section 110 of Article III. of the Constitution of the United States, it is declared that:
“If any person or persons, owing allegiance to the United States of America, shall levy war against them, or shall adhere to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States, or elsewhere, and shall be thereof convicted on confession in open Court, or on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act of the treason whereof he or they shall stand indicted, such person or persons shall be adjudged guilty of treason against the United States, and SHALL SUFFER DEATH; and that if any person or persons, having knowledge of the commission of any of the treasons aforesaid, shall conceal, and not, as soon as may be, disclose and make known the same to the President of the United States, or some one of the Judges thereof, or to the President or Governor of a particular State, or some one of the Judges or Justices thereof, such person or persons, on conviction, shall be adjudged guilty of misprision of treason, and shall be imprisoned not exceeding seven years, and fined not exceeding one thousand dollars.”
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One factor is that a lot of terrorist business is conducted over social media, which immigration officials are prohibited from checking. I know that was an issue in the San Bernadino shooting – people blamed immigration officials for not knowing what the woman had posted online, but there’s no way they could have known because they’re not allowed to check. And, frankly, I guess I’m okay with that – I think we have enough government intrusion and the government has enough ways to gather data. It’s like saying that the best way to find a needle in a haystack is to add more hay. I’m not anti-government by any means, but I’m not in favor of the government having too much power in the name of “keeping us safe”.
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The 1500 maybe just an estimate, and they might have arrived back without papers.
In the fall, 200K immigrants, most of them from Syria, and the vast majority of them single males, wanted to enter the EU through Hungary. Most were heading to Germany. They threw away their papers. Hungary, quoting EU border laws, didn’t want to let them in without papers, so they set up camps for them till they were ID’d.. The migrants protested, Western Europe protested, US protested, so Hungary let the 200K immigrants pass through Hungary without any papers.
A few terrorist could certainly slip through. If the 1500 is correct, that’s less than 1% of the 200K.
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Please correct me if I am wrong.
I just watch Divergence 3. Through digital ADVANCED technology, the rich, power and authority has the source to determine, to frame, to manipulate the cause of any trouble.
Educators seem very naive and trusting the invisible power’s intimidation, morality and empty promise.
The poor and the uneducated were manipulated and abused by both the righteousness and the rightfulness for the power struggle of control in economy and in politics.
If people have RESPONSIBILITIES for their own health, learning, and humanity (= mutual respect for the well-being one another), then the righteousness cannot abuse their economic power, and the rightfulness cannot abuse their demand of human rights in order to create chaos in society. Back2basic
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The answer to this question is very complex. One thing that seems obvious is that we do not know exactly who or how many people have gone to fight in Syria any more than we know how many went to Spain in the 30s to fight in that Civil War. Recall that going to that conflict was equated with Communism by association on the part of some American politicians. There were hundreds who went to Spain, and there are certainly hundreds who have gone or tried to go to Syria. They do so secretly, otherwise they would be apprehended as some have been.
Another layer of complexity here involves the journalist in modern times. CNN goes for ratings, so you report things that are alarming and stir people to watch you again. Just last night I was listening to a discussion of Donald Trump’s use of the calling in to news shows to get free air time. He can call in and get a free audience for his contemplations of reality. Even Diane cannot do that, and she is quite well known. Thus the reporting becomes based on wondering about possible facts. Verifiable factual information becomes hard find. In any case it is more boring to explain the statistical method used to guess about possible jihadists and more exciting to just say that “sources” say there are a particular contrived number somewhere. Joe McCarthy waved a list of Communists in the same way. We were in the Cold War, so people easily believed that there were really legitimate names on the list that were dangerous.
I sometimes think that journalism should be required to be as dry as good hard history. When historians write about the past, they are required by the discipline they work in to leave a research trail through footnotes. I am sure all who read here will recall the same requirements in their own field. This is called academic honesty, and it is essential to accurate discourse. But to ask journalists to do this in a free society is to limit free speech, an anathema to that society. Thus it is incumbent upon the journalist to bring to us such stories in a way that explain the complexity of the situation. If it is dry, then so much the better.
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It’s called Liberalism.
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You left off three letters: n-e-o.
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Sorry, I do not understand these responses.
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