While the Syrian refugee debate kicks into high gear in the nations capitol, it seems that one group fleeing persecution is escaping the attention of the mainstream media. A group of 27 Chaldean Christians arrived in Southern California by way of Mexico after their applications for political asylum were rejected in April and May of this year. Why would these folks be fleeing their homeland? Well it seems that Al Qaeda and ISIS drove them out like so many others in the region. San Diego has one of the largest populations of ethnic Chaldean Christians outside of Iraq and many churches in the area have been known to sponsor other victims of the ISIS invasion caused by the vacuum of power left by the Obama Administrations withdrawl of U.S. forces from the area.

The ten women and 17 men have relations in the El Cajon area that they were hopeful to live with until they were able to get jobs and settle themselves, but due to what ICE officals are calling “less than honest responses on their asylum applications” they will be deported instead. What dishonest answers did they give? It seems that they went to Germany before before making their way to the border and they did not reveal this information on their applications. So far 22 of them have been ordered out of the U.S. and another five may be given a similar ruling. According to an ICE spokesperson, they will continue to seek out those who have been ordered removed.

All this while we have six men in Minnesota  and one in San Diego, CA who were arrested in April for trying to join ISIS in Syria.

“Mohamed Abdihamid Farah, 21; Adnan Abdihamid Farah, 19; Abdurahman Yasin Daud, 21; Zacharia Yusuf Abdurahman, 19; Hanad Mustafe Musse, 19; and Guled Ali Omar, 20, were arrested Sunday in Minneapolis and San Diego and are scheduled to appear in federal court Monday.

“They have spent a great deal of time over the past year trying to get to Syria to fight for ISIL,” U.S. Attorney Andrew Luger said at a press conference.”

In fact over the past eighteen months, there have been 70 people arrested in the U.S.A. for trying to support or join ISIS and according to an article researched in the Daily Mail UK many of these people are disaffected immigrants. One is a former Air Force veteran and two cousins who plotted to join ISIS were hoping to use one of their National Guard training to aid the terrorist organization.

“Six Bosnian immigrants, three from Missouri, two from Illinois and one from New York, were charged in February with sending money and military equipment to extremist groups in Syria including ISIS and the Al Qaeda-affiliated Al-Nusra Front.

Following a series of raids in April, eight Somali friends were charged with conspiracy to provide material support and attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization.

Air Force veteran Tairod Nathan Webster Pugh was arrested in January and is accused of the ultimate act of betrayal – joining the ranks of ISIS to wage war on the country he once served. The 47-year-old was an avionics instrument system specialist from 1986 to 1990 but Federal authorities say he converted to Islam after leaving the military and became steadily more radical.

Cousins Jonas and Hasan Edmonds – a National Guard soldier – are accused of plotting a ‘Charlie Hebdo’-style raid on a military facility.

Prosecutors say the pair planned to utilize Hasan’s inside knowledge to slaughter around 120 servicemen at the Illinois National Guard Armory

Yemeni-born Mufid Elfgeeh was a naturalized American citizen running a pizza and chicken shop in Rochester, New York. But in May 2014 he became one of the first people on American soil to be arrested and accused of being a recruiter for ISIS.

Gunmen Elton Simpson, 30, and Nadir Soofi, 34, tried to storm the controversial May 3 event in Garland, Tex. but were shot dead by police. Moments earlier one of the pair had tweeted a pledge of allegiance to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.”

And the list goes on. One funny thing that I noticed about all of these ISIS wanna-be’s. They are all Muslim. Not a one was a Christian-odd, don’t you think?

The 5 currently being held in the ICE detention facility in San Diego will stay there until ICE can find another “safe” country willing to accept them and no one knows how long that could take. This is unbelievable since over 10,000 Syrian Muslim refugees applications are being considered for fast track acceptance. In September, Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) introduced the Refugee Resettlement and Security Act. If it were enacted it would prioritize the immigration of victimized religious factions-which for Middle Eastern Christians should be a no-brainer. I won’t re-post the multiple pictures of the heads of Christians that “decorate” the park around Mosul Iraq, put there by ISIS but I am sure that these folks could happily find these photos for ICE. One problem though is that the Obama Administration doesn’t want to grant Christians prioritization-even though they are a religious minority in the region.

As someone whose home city has been threatened by no less than eight convicted terrorists-many of them refugees themselves- I would gladly accept Chaldean Christians over Muslims any day of the week. Many of them are people of integrity and are incredibly hard workers with strong entreprenureal streaks. But most of all, as Andy McCarthy, former US attorney for the Southern District  of New York who led the prosecution of the “Blind Sheik” for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, points out “The purpose of asylum analysis is the liklihood of persecution. There is no question that Christians face more persecution in Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East than Muslims do. We should acknowledge that Christians are being subjected to genocide and take steps to protect them.”

But that wouldn’t fit the Democrat Party’s current narrative of “Terrorism has nothing to do with Islam”, and after all that is what counts right?