Vetting immigrants to the United States from 38 visa waiver countries — particularly from the Middle East — poses an "enormous, enormous" security risk, former New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik told
Newsmax TV on Thursday.
"We're dealing with people who are coming from terrorist countries, terrorist-harboring countries," Kerik, who commanded the city's force on 9/11, said in an interview on the new program, "Dennis Michael Lynch: Unfiltered."
The program, hosted by the acclaimed filmmaker and documentarian,
is debuting on Newsmax TV this week.
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"We're bringing refugees in that can't be vetted," Kerik told Lynch. "We don't have a relationship with Syria. We don't have a relationship with their embassy.
"We don't have a relationship with the Iraqi government as it stands today, a good one, where we're going to get accurate information from that country or any of the others on where these people are coming from.
"How are you going to vet that many people?" Kerik later asked. "How are you going to vet them accurately, when we don't have access to real data?
"We need real data, real-time data, real intelligence — and we don't have access to it."
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