![\"Iraqi](\"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/chaldean-christians-rally.jpg\")
<\/a>Iraqi Chaldean Catholics rally in support of 27 Chaldeans being held at an ICE detention center in California.<\/p><\/div>\n
More than two dozen Iraqi Chaldean Christians forced from their homes by ISIS have been detained at an ICE detention center in California for six months after crossing the border from Mexico.<\/p>\n
The San Diego Union reported July 31 that 20 of the 27 Chaldeans at the Otay Detention Center in Otay Mesa, California, have American family members living in Southern California who are willing to sponsor them.<\/p>\n
Family members have been holding weekly vigils and rallies to draw attention to the detentions. Large U.S. Chaldean Catholic communities reside in San Diego and Detroit.<\/p>\n
The family members say they\u2019ve been given few details on why they\u2019ve been detained for so long, despite being refugees from Middle East terror.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese aren\u2019t people who just decided to cross the U.S.-Mexico border. These are people saying, \u2018we have nowhere else to go,\u2019\u201d Mark Arabo, a spokesman for the Chaldean community, told the San Diego Union.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt seems like the border is open to everyone unless you\u2019re an Iraq Christian fleeing ISIS,\u201d Arabo told Bill O\u2019Reilly of Fox News Monday. \u201cObama is to blame, Congress is to blame, and the U.S. State Department is to blame.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Chaldean Christians are being held \u201cwithout any logic or explanation; they\u2019ve escaped ISIS only to be imprisoned by ICE. These are 20 innocent Christians who escaped a holocaust only to be imprisoned by ICE,\u201d Arabo said. \u201cThese are people we should be celebrating not imprisoning.\u201d<\/p>\n
What do YOU think? Is Barack Obama biased against Christians? Sound off in the WND poll<\/p>\n
Lauren Mack, spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, confirmed that 27 Iraqi nationals are in custody but she told the Union she couldn\u2019t comment on individual immigration cases.<\/p>\n
The extended detention of the Iraqi Christians represents a stark contrast from the way the wave of Central American women and children were treated when they massed at the border last summer. The overwhelming majority were detained for a matter of days or weeks, then released and given a hearing date to appear in immigration court.<\/p>\n
image: http:\/\/www.wnd.com\/files\/2015\/08\/frank-wolf.jpg<\/p>\n
Former Congressman Frank Wolf of Virginia is now an advocate for persecuted Christians.
\nFormer Congressman Frank Wolf of Virginia is now an advocate for persecuted Christians.
\nFormer Republican Congressman Frank Wolf of Virginia, who now serves as a distinguished senior fellow at the 21st Century Wilberforce Initiative, which advocates for persecuted Christians worldwide, said the situation is a sad commentary on the state of U.S. priorities when it comes to asylum seekers.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne can understand why they would leave their country when they are facing genocide,\u201d Wolf told WND. \u201cI have seen the area they came from (in Iraq).\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not a surprise that Christians being hunted down by ISIS would seek to leave and find refuge in a country like the U.S. where they have family ties and cultural ties, he said.<\/p>\n
\u2018Inherent bias against Christians\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cThe fact that the border is so porous is an indictment of this administration. People have been talking about it for years,\u201d Wolf said. \u201cBut for Chaldean Christians, for them to have to go back to Iraq, wow, when for other border crossers the norm is they process them, give them a court date and release them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wolf said there seems to be an \u201cinherent bias\u201d against Christians in the current administration.<\/p>\n
He said it\u2019s clearly easier to get asylum in the U.S. as a Muslim than it is for a Christian and it\u2019s been that way for a number of years.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know why, but if you look the latest numbers that have come out it\u2019s pretty clear,\u201d Wolf said. \u201cRemember when the 21 Coptic Christians were beheaded they were referred to as Egyptian migrant workers, not Christians. And when the 148 Kenyan Christians were executed by al-Shabaab they were not called Christians, so you clearly have an inherent bias in the State Department. I think it\u2019s more in this administration than I\u2019ve ever seen it but I think even in previous administrations that bias has existed within the State Department.\u201d<\/p>\n
Joop Koopman, communications manager for Aid to the Church in Need USA, a Catholic relief organization, said the treatment of the Chaldeans seems out of step with current U.S. immigration policy, unless there is more to the story that is not known.<\/p>\n
\u201cLeaving aside the specifics of the immigration laws and the border crossing it does seem to call to mind the administration\u2019s reluctance to talk specifically about Christian persecution by Muslim extremists, under which, at least in theory, these people would deserve asylum,\u201d Koopman said. \u201cBut there may be other reasons we don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n
Koopman said these types of asylum cases will only increase as ISIS and other militant Islamists make the final push to eradicate Christianity from its birthplace in the Middle East.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is clear there will be more and more of these kinds of cases coming, as Chaldean Christians are forced out of their country, they will have no alternative but for mass immigration,\u201d he said. \u201cSo what will we do? Will the U.S. and other countries make room for them? The big question is, will persecution by ISIS qualify as grounds for asylum?\u201d<\/p>\n
Only Muslims need apply?<\/p>\n
Pamela Geller, an activist, blogger and author, said the Obama administration has demonstrated an \u201cunstated preference\u201d for Muslim immigrants over Christians.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis goes hand-in-hand with his almost complete silence about the Muslim persecution of Christians worldwide, and his consistent failure when he does address it to identify the perpetrators,\u201d Geller told WND. \u201cWe have seen this throughout his presidency: a relentless tendency to favor Muslims and paint a rosy, fictional view of Islam, while being harsh toward Christianity. It is all part of his post-American agenda, as I explained in my 2010 book, \u2018The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration\u2019s War On America.\u2018\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018Horrific conditions\u2019 for Christians in Iraq<\/p>\n
Wolf said he visited Iraq in January and was struck by the horrific conditions under which Christians are forced to live.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn January we spent five days there and the conditions are brutal.\u201d<\/p>\n
Just last week, on July 30, Wolf sent a letter to president Obama and United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon asking that they declare what is taking place in Iraq and Syria to be an official genocide.<\/p>\n
A cover story in Sunday\u2019s New York Times Magazine, for instance, describes the abduction of a 3-year-old girl from her mother, and the separation of captives into \u201chealthy\u201d and \u201cinfirm\u201d groups, a gesture chillingly reminiscent of the Holocaust. Often, there is a third group, comprised of women, soon to be sold as sex slaves, according to Wolf\u2019s report.<\/p>\n
There are also reports of children born to these captured women, Wolf wrote in the letter, who are raised \u201cto conform to the insurgency\u2019s interpretation of \u2018pure\u2019 Islam.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cISIS has kidnapped and forcibly transferred the children of Christians and Yazidis, including children as young as seven months,\u201d Wolf added. \u201cReports indicate that these children are being intimidated and brainwashed in order to create the next generation of radical insurgents.\u201d For this reason, \u201cit is imperative that the issue be brought immediately before the Security Council and that a declaration of genocide be made.\u201d<\/p>\n
What is going on there meets the test of U.N. Article 2 of what constitutes a genocide, Wolf said.<\/p>\n
A growing \u2018sense of abandonment\u2019 by Western Christians<\/p>\n
Wolf described the Iraqi Christian community, 1.5 million strong when the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, as \u201con the edge of extinction.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe went to Erbil, and to the front lines where the Peshmerga (Kurds) are fighting ISIS using very old weapons, and then to the refugee camps, we went through the whole area, to the Nineveh plain, where Christian militia have formed, like a national guard, to defend their villages,\u201d Wolf said. \u201cBut the Christians and the Yazidis are all facing genocide and their stories are so frightening. We interviewed two 17 to 18-year-old girls who were kidnapped by ISIS and escaped. They feel a tremendous sense of abandonment by the West, particularly those who are Christians.\u201d<\/p>\n
One man told the story of his wife, who was in the hospital with breast cancer when ISIS came in and took over.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd ISIS went to the hospital and told them they would only treat his wife if they converted to Islam,\u201d Wolf said. \u201cThe wife refused to convert, the husband also, and she died without treatment, and they feel why isn\u2019t the church in the West, why isn\u2019t someone advocating for them?<\/p>\n
\u201cSo the conditions there are horrible, and there will be no way you can send these Chaldeans back,\u201d without them being killed.<\/p>\n
Iraq\u2019s 1.5 million Christians have now dwindled to about 250,000.<\/p>\n
\u201cRoughly 17 Iraqi Christian families leave every day,\u201d Wolf said. \u201cSome went to Syria and now they\u2019re been pushed out of Syria.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wolf said he would not be surprised, \u201cif within a year you see the black flag of ISIS flying over Damascus.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe noose is tightening around Assad,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re not even aiding the Kurds who are fighting ISIS.\u201d<\/p>\n
More biblical activity occurred in Iraq than in Jerusalem, Wolf said.<\/p>\n
\u201cRebekah and Daniel were buried in Iraq, Ezekiel was buried in Iraq, Nahum\u2019s tomb is there, and of course Jonah\u2019s tomb was blown up a few months ago by ISIS, so the cradle of Christianity is ready to be emptied of Christians.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
OBAMA DETAINS 27 CHRISTIAN ASYLUM SEEKERS Fleeing ISIS in Iraq, they find no refuge in U.S. Leo Hohmann WND.com More than two dozen Iraqi Chaldean Christians forced from their homes by ISIS have been detained at an ICE detention center … Continue reading