Alert: Kenya to Close One of the Largest Refugee Camps in the World

That would be Dadaab—home to hundreds of thousands of Somalis and a place where the US government has gone to select Somalis to bring to America.
 

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Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar spent a few years here before being placed in Minnesota

 
Although, under President Trump very few Somalis are getting into the US these days, this is a story worth watching because you know that the United Nations will be pressuring our State Department to up the Somali numbers using the closing of a significant camp as the excuse.
If Trump doesn’t win reelection in 2020 the trickle could be a flood from Dadaab to your town.
The Kenyan government has long maintained that the camp is a breeding ground for Islamic extremists and it points to recent terror attacks in Kenya linked to Dadaab residents.

From the Sun Daily (hat tip: Joanne),

Kenya plans to close world’s biggest refugee camp Dadaab: Document

NAIROBI: Kenya plans to shutter the world’s largest refugee camp, home to nearly a quarter of a million people, in the next few months, according to an internal UN document seen by AFP Tuesday.
The three-decade-old Dadaab camp in eastern Kenya, which shelters mostly Somalis, would be closed by the end of August under the Kenyan plan, it said.
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A United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) document dated Feb 28 said the Kenyan government had sent a note verbale informing it of “plans to close the Dadaab camps within a six-month period”.
The note, which was dated Feb 19, asked UNHCR “to expedite relocation of the refugees and asylum-seekers residing therein.”
In the document, the UNHCR said it was committed to working with the government on voluntary repatriation to countries of origin, relocating refugees to other parts of Kenya and resettlement to third countries. [That would be us!—ed]
An aid worker in Dadaab, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed to AFP that all international organisations were aware of a plan to close the camp, but the “government is keeping it low profile.”
Dadaab is home to some 230,000 people, the vast majority of them Somalis who fled across the border following the outbreak of civil war in 1991.

A security risk for Kenya!

The government has presented Dadaab as a security risk, saying Somali Islamists inside the camp planned the Shabaab attacks at Nairobi’s Westgate shopping mall in 2013 and the Garissa university attack in 2015, though it has not provided evidence.
The latest effort to shut it comes shortly after the Jan 15 attack on the Dusit hotel and office complex in Nairobi that left 21 dead. At least 12 suspects were arrested in Dadaab in connection with the attack.

More here.
I had been hearing for quite some time about Dadaab possibly being closed and it hasn’t happened so far.  But, keep an eye on this because it is just this kind of scare tactic the UN might use to pressure us to increase our Somali intake.
After all, the State Department office responsible for the refugee program is still headed by a hardline Obama-era holdover.  The President never seriously attempted to put one of his own at the top of the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration, so the bureaucrats run the program.

Even as you love the President, you should keep the pressure on him on issues you care about because you know the other side never ceases in pulling him in their direction.  Contact the President!

 
 
 

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