Terror attacks overseas don't diminish Peduto's commitment to welcoming refugees

Despite the latest terrorist attack in Brussels, Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto said he remains steadfast in his resolve to help relocate Syrians and other refugees into the region when possible.

“Not at all,” he said when asked whether he might change his mind after the Belgium attacks.

“I think the mayor's commitment to the fundamental democratic principle of government that this country is built on has not changed,” Peduto's Chief of Staff Kevin Acklin said when asked the same question.

Americans have more to fear from homegrown terrorists than immigrants and refugees coming to the United States from Muslim countries, terrorism experts said.

Michael Kenney, a counterterrorism expert and an associate professor of international affairs at the University of Pittsburgh, said he has found no documented reports of immigrants or refugees staging attacks in the United States.

“Most of the refugees out of Iraq and Syria are fleeing the breakdown in governance and incredible violence that is taking place,” Kenney said. “They're just basically regular people whose lives have been torn asunder.”

He said the FBI has arrested several Iraqi refugees for violence in their home country, but not in the United States.

Refugee resettlement agencies in the region declined to comment.

Since October 2010, the United States has admitted 2,234 Syrian refugees, 169 of whom have settled in Pennsylvania, according to the State Department. Four families are living in Pittsburgh.

Local agencies relocate about 500 refugees from around the globe in the Pittsburgh region each year.

“The worst thing we could do is overreact and start doing some of the things that you're starting to hear now from some of the presidential candidates,” Kenney said.

Refugees applying for asylum are heavily vetted before being permitted to enter the United States. The process begins with reference checks, in-person interviews and biological screening conducted by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. The few applicants the U.N. refers to the United States — many of them torture survivors, rape victims and families headed by women — undergo a similar battery of interviews and background checks conducted by nine federal agencies, including the FBI's Terrorist Screening Center. The process takes 18 to 24 months, on average.

Legislation that would have required the heads of the Department of Homeland Security, FBI and Office of the Director of National Intelligence to affirm that Iraqi and Syrian refugee applicants are not a threat to the United Statesfailed to pass in the Senate in January.

Republican candidates Ted Cruz and Donald Trump have respectively called for police patrols and extensive surveillance of Muslim communities in the United States, as well as bombing of Islamic State-held areas overseas.

President Obama during a news conference in Argentina called the suggestions inhumane and un-American.

The Rev. John Sawicki, assistant professor of political science at Duquesne University, agreed with Kenney that it would be a mistake for Americans to overreact.

“The idea that somehow terrorists are slipping in as immigrants or refugees I don't think is a clear and present danger,” Sawicki said. “The real issue is your own citizens who are going abroad to fight and then returning to continue the battle here.”

Kenney said Americans should worry more about citizens who have become radicalized and extremist groups such as white supremacists.

“... What we should continue to be focused on is the phenomena of homegrown radicalization here in the United States,” he said.

An ongoing Tribune-Review investigative series, “Homegrown Terror,” has been focused on just that. The newspaper has examined the shifting nature of terrorism and domestic radicalization in the Islamic State era.

The investigation found self-radicalization here in the United States — often aided by online contacts with jihadists overseas — is likely to result in more “lone wolf” attacks by one or two people rather than the al-Qaida model of large attacks by carefully cultivated and trained recruits. This new model has thrust parents, sports coaches and longtime friends onto the front lines of a global battle against an ideology that, on Tuesday, killed at least 34 and wounded more than 270 in Brussels.

Bob Bauder is a Tribune-Review staff writer. He can be reached at 412-765-2312 or bbauder@tribweb.com.