Tag Archives: Bureau of Consular Affairs

The Possible Cost Of Not Respecting The Chain Of Command

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Yesterday The Gateway Pundit posted an article titled, “State Department Employee in Japan Ignored President Trump’s Orders and Allowed Americans with Coronavirus to Fly Back to the US.” The State Department employee who ignored the President’s orders is Ian Brownlee, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Consular Affairs. He needs to be fired immediately.

The article reports:

‘It’s important to remember this was an emerging and unusual circumstance,’ said Ian Brownlee, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Consular Affairs.

‘We had 328 people on buses, a plan to execute and we received lab results on people who were otherwise asymptomatic, un-ill people on a bus on the way to the airport.

‘The people on the ground did exactly the right thing…in bringing them home.’

People who had tested positive were put into isolation units on board the two cargo planes, which then flew to Joint Base San Antonio – Lackland in Texas and Travis Air Base in California.

Although officials reassured the press that the sick passengers were thoroughly contained and every precaution had been taken to ensure the safety of the healthy people onboard, reports later emerged that people on the flights had no idea they were sharing yet another even more confined space with infected individuals.

When the planes landed at their respective destinations late Sunday night, six ‘high risk’ passengers from Lackland and seven from Travis were ushered onto an additional flight to Omaha Eppley Airfield in Nebraska.

Mr. Brownlee did not have the authority to override the President’s orders. Hopefully everything will work out in the end, but Mr. Brownlee has created a risk for American citizens that did not need to be there. He should be immediately terminated for insubordination.

Sleep Well

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Yesterday PJMedia reported the following at a House Oversight Committee hearing:

At a House Oversight Committee hearing yesterday, a State Department official admitted the government does not know the whereabouts of thousands of foreigners who had their visas revoked over terror concerns.

“You don’t have a clue do you?” Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, told Michele Thoren Bond, assistant secretary for the Bureau of Consular Affairs.

Bond told the committee that the U.S. has revoked more than 122,000 visas, 9,500 of which were revoked due to terrorism concerns.

Chaffetz asked Bond where those individuals were located now, to which she responded: “I don’t know.”

The startling admission came as members of the committee pressed administration officials on what safeguards are in place to reduce the risk from would-be extremists.

At issue is how closely the U.S. government examines the background of people seeking entry to the country, including reviews of their social media postings.

“If half the employers are doing it in the United States of America, if colleges are doing it for students, why wouldn’t Homeland Security do it?” said Rep. Stephen Lynch, D-Mass. “We don’t even look at their public stuff, that’s what kills me.”

People wanting to come to America are not yet citizens–they do not have the rights of citizens. It is the government’s responsibility to vet them carefully. If the government cannot do that, we need a different government.