It’s shocking how easily our immigration system can be defrauded.
(CNN)A Chicago-area resident who participated in two terror attacks in Israel in 1969 pleaded guilty Tuesday to having illegally obtained her American citizenship.
Rasmieh Odeh, 69, entered her plea Tuesday afternoon in federal court in Detroit, admitting she had been convicted in Israeli court in 1970 for her role in two bombings, and that she had willingly omitted that information from her US citizenship application.[…]Odeh was sentenced to life in prison by an Israeli military court in 1970 in connection with two bombs planted the previous year in Jerusalem by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, according to court documents. One bomb killed two people at a supermarket. The other damaged the British Consulate in Jerusalem, but caused no injuries.Odeh, a Jordanian national, was later released from Israeli prison in 1979 as part of a prisoner transfer.[…]
Court documents state that Odeh is a community organizer with the Arab American Action Network. The group, a Chicago-area nonprofit, lists Odeh as an associate director on its website.
She came in in 1994 and became a citizen in 2004. It is probably (hopefully?) harder to hide information than it was 23 years ago with digital records now. I wouldn’t characterize our system now as anything like it was 20+ years ago.