US presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump says “a lot” of Syrians accepted for asylum in the US are members of the Daesh (ISIL) Takfiri group.
Trump criticized President Barack Obama's refugee policy and said the number of refugees and immigrants is increasing in the US and if presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton “gets in, it will be massive and we won’t even have a country anymore.”
“We will be afraid to walk outside,” the property tycoon said in an interview with Fox News on Wednesday.
“They are letting tens of thousands of people come in from Syria and nobody knows who these people are and a lot of those people are ISIL,” he noted.
The billionaire businessman further blamed Obama and Clinton, the former secretary of state, for not doing enough to stop Daesh when it could have been “wiped out quickly and effectively.”
Trump has repeatedly warned that the US should not accept Syrian refugees.
He has also accused Obama of purposefully funneling refugees into states with sizeable Republican votes.
Last month, Trump said that the Obama administration’s effort to accept more Syrian refugees has put the country on the verge of another terrorist attack. He said refugees would plan the next 9/11 attack.
The Obama administration has planned to take in at least 10,000 Syrian refugees by the end of the fiscal year.
Trump has propelled himself as the presumptive Republican nominee by framing himself as an anti-establishment outsider.
However, his campaign has been defined by controversy from the beginning, including disparaging remarks about women, Mexican immigrants and Muslims.
In December 2015, Trump ignited a political firestorm by floating the idea of a “total and complete” ban on all Muslims entering the US.