McSally bill to prevent foreign fighter travel passes House

The U.S. House of Representatives passed U.S. Rep. Martha McSally’s (R-AZ) legislation on Monday to require a stress test of U.S. government protection and prevention programs against terrorist travel.

The bill, the Terrorist and Foreign Fighter Travel Exercise Act, is the result of a task force on combating terrorist and foreign fighter travel into U.S. security that investigated vulnerabilities and threats posed by ISIS. After a six month investigation, the task force released a report containing 32 key findings and more than 50 different recommendations to strengthen the nation’s safety.

“In our findings, the task force found that the growing complexity and changing nature of the foreign fighter phenomenon may be creating unseen gaps in our defenses, yet it has been years since any large-scale stress test has been conducted,” McSally said. “Carrying out such a test would be beneficial in understanding how partners at all levels of government, and abroad, are currently responding to these scenarios.”

The U.S. government last conducted an exercise of this nature with its Federal Emergency Management Agency in 2009. The exercise focused primarily on terrorists attempting to infiltrate the United States through a variety of means.

McSally noted that the task force should also focus on homegrown terrorists leaving the country to train overseas with terrorist groups as foreign fighters.