Speech #1140063261

According to some estimates. more than 500 people have died crossing the sea from Turkey to Greece so far this year. Despite the risks. thousands make the trip every day. Greek Coast Guard officials told us that when refugees see a Coast Guard ship. they may even slash holes in their own rafts just so they will not be turned back. I met with the mayor of Lesbos. who described how his tiny Greek island of 80.000 people has struggled to cope with those refugees who wash ashoremore than 100.000 people in October alone. Refugees are processed in reception centers on the island before boarding ferries to Athens. but Greece plainly lacks the resources necessary to handle these enormous numbers. Refugees pile into the reception centers. overflowing the facilities and sleeping in parks or beside the road. Last month. a volunteer doctor in Lesbos was quoted as saying: "There are thousands of children here and their feet are literally rotting. they cant keep dry. they have high fevers. and theyre standing in the pouring rain for days on end." Recently. the mayor told a local radio program that the island had run out of room to bury the dead. Greeces overwhelmed registration system is not only a humanitarian crisis but also a security risk. In meeting after meeting. I asked Greek officials about security screening for these migrants. and time after time I heard the same answer. It was all Greece could do simply to fingerprint these individuals and write down their names before sending them off to Athens. and from there. to somewhere else in Europe. Now Greeces Interior Minister says that fingerprints taken from one of the Paris attackers may match someone who registered as a refugee at a Greek island entry point in early October. Whether this ultimately proves to be true. there is no question that a screening system that can do no more than confirm after the fact that a terrorist entered Europe is obviously not a screening system that is working. The burden of dealing with Syrian refugees cannot fall on Greece alone. Greece and the other border countries dealing with this crisis need money and expertise to screen out security threats. Europe needs to provide that assistance as quickly as possible. and if we are serious about preventing another tragedy like the one in Paris. the United States must help. We must build adequate procedures to make sure that refugees. especially those who have entered Europe through this slipshod screening process. can enter the United States only after they have been thoroughly vetted and we are fully confident that they do not pose a risk to our Nation or our people. The security threat is real and it must be addressed. but on our visit to Lesbos. we also had the chance to meet with refugees processed at the Moria reception center to see who most of them really are. From the outside. with its barbed wire and guard towers. Moria looks like a prison. At the entrance. the words "Freedom For All" are etched into the concrete encircling the facility. but speaking with refugees inside feels more like a 21stcentury Ellis Island. We met doctors. teachers. civil engineers. and college students. We met young. educated. middleclass Syrians seeking freedom and opportunity for themselves and their families. They were seeking a safe refuge from ISIS. just like the rest of us. The most heartbreaking cases are the unaccompanied children. These boys and girls are separated from the other refugees in a fencedin outdoor dormitory area. I met a young girl in that fencedin areayounger than my own granddaughters. sent out on this perilous journey alone. When I asked how old she was. she shyly held up seven fingers.