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Capitol View®
Mark Zdechlik

McFadden: East African community worried about ISIS

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East African Ali Ibrahim
East African Ali Ibrahim was among the group that met with McFadden.

Republican U.S. Senate candidate Mike McFadden continued his criticism of Democrats' foreign policy Thursday night.  McFadden met privately with leaders in the East African community in Minneapolis.

After the meeting in a room above the Seward Market, McFadden told reporters the leaders expressed concerns about the radicalization of some youth and, more broadly, about a lack of education and economic  opportunities for young East Africans in Minnesota.

Mike McFadden
Mike McFadden spoke with reporters in south MPLS after meeting East African community leaders

 

"They want to get to the bottom of how these children are being brain-washed, it's important and then they talked about some of the longer-term root causes," McFadden said, adding that education was stressed. "We have the worst outcomes in the country for African-Americans and Latinos."

McFadden's opponent, DFL Sen. Al Franken said the FBI has informed his office that as many as a dozen Minnesotans may have traveled to the Middle East to take up arms with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, also referred to as ISIS. This week Franken asked the U.S. Department of Justice to address ISIS recruitment efforts in the United States.

McFadden said Franken has not done enough to highlight the problem.

Ali Ibrahim, 45, was in the group that met with McFadden for about 30 minutes. He said he's leaning toward supporting McFadden in the November election, but suggested he's not yet made a final decision. As for a solution to ISIS recruitment, Ibrahim said the community needs to reach out to young people to find out what they're thinking.

"Most of them are idle and they need to be engaged. Probably they are doing this out of a desperate situation so we need to know the real facts why this is happening and why they have chosen this course of action they have taken. That is the main thing."

UPDATE 6 a.m. Friday: The Franken campaign responded to this post late Thursday night chiding McFadden for what it called his, "newfound concern with terrorism."

Franken campaign spokeswoman Alexandra Fetissoff noted McFadden avoided answering news inquires about his position on Syria more than one year ago.

Fetissoff said, "Senator Franken has been working on these issues since his first FBI briefing on terrorist recruitment in our communities soon after joining the Senate in 2009."