In a private 2013 speech, Hillary Clinton worried about the risk of “jihadists” entering Jordan with “legitimate refugees” because “they can’t possibly vet all those refugees.”
Clinton today wants to increase the amount of Syrian refugees the United States takes in by 55,000 annually. She believes that the U.S. refugee screening process is comprehensive enough to catch potential jihadists trying to enter the country, though FBI Director James Comey has said that the vetting process is severely limited by a lack of available data.
“So I think you’re right to have gone to the places that you visited because there’s a discussion going on now across the region to try to see where there might be common ground to deal with the threat posed by extremism, and particularly with Syria, which has everyone quite worried, Jordan because it’s on their border and they have hundreds of thousands of refugees and they can’t possibly vet all those refugees,” Clinton said before the Jewish United Fund Of Metropolitan Chicago during an October 2013 lunch.
She added, “So they don’t know if, you know, jihadists are coming in along with legitimate refugees. Turkey for the same reason.”
Clinton proposed last year that the United States take in 65,000 Syrian refugees annually, an increase from 10,000 refugees per year. Republican nominee Donald Trump has said her proposal to increase the number of Syrian refugees entering the U.S. would be the “great Trojan horse of all time.”
Clinton got paid $400,000 for the speech to the Jewish group. The excerpt of her speech was included in Wikileaks email sent by a Clinton staffer flagging newsworthy comments by Clinton at private speeches. Her campaign has continued to refuse to release the transcripts of these private speeches, which earned her millions.