Dems press Kerry to help religious minorities targeted by ISIS

Senate Democrats are pressing the Obama administration to increase support for religious minorities being targeted by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

Democratic Sens. Richard Blumenthal (Conn.), Sherrod Brown (Ohio), Kirsten Gillibrand (N.Y.), Barbara Mikulski (Md.), Brian Schatz (Hawaii) and Jeanne Shaheen (N.H.) sent a letter on Monday to Secretary of State John Kerry.

{mosads}They want Kerry to “invoke your authority under the Refugee Crisis Act of 2007 to designate religious minorities, including Yazidis and Christians, as persecuted groups by establishing a Priority 2 category which makes each group eligible to seek refugee assistance within Iraq,” according to the letter.

The senators added that although the groups are in Iraq they should receive refugee assistance “because many of them are located within territory occupied by [ISIS], making it very difficult to escape to safety.”

They are also asking Kerry to speed up the department’s processing of refugee claims, including doubling the number of State Department personnel in the country to process Iraqi refugees, and finding a nongovernment group to work with U.S. staff to identify and screen religious minorities.

The refugee crisis has been under the congressional spotlight since the photo of a drowned Syrian child escaping to Europe went viral. Meanwhile, The New York Times reported last month that ISIS kidnapped more than 5,200 Yazidis last year, with at least 3,144 still in captivity.

Kerry said Sunday that the United States would increase the number of refugees it accepts to 100,000 — compared to the current annual cap of 70,000 — by 2017.

The senators added that the State Department should continue to urge the Iraqi government to do more to help female victims, as well as using its own resource “as part of the strategy to rebuild Iraq.”

They also want a report from Larry Bartlett, the department’s director of the admissions office on the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, who recently traveled to Erbil to discuss the refugee crisis.