GOP bill would change Visa Waiver Program

Sen. Dan Coats (R-Ind.) has introduced a bill that seeks to strengthen border security in the face of the threat from the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

Thousands of ISIS members are thought to be carrying Western passports, which has raised alarms that they could enter the United States and take part in an attack.

“The threat of home-grown terrorism is real and growing,” Coats said in a statement Tuesday. “It is imperative that we address these new dangers to our homeland by acting to reassess and strengthen our border security.”

Coats’s bill would suspend the Visa Waiver Program for countries that don’t comply with information-sharing practices, and would permit the Secretary of State to revoke passports issued to U.S. citizens suspected of engaging in terrorism.

The Visa Waiver Program allows citizens from several dozen nations to travel to the U.S. without a visa.

The Coats bill would also amend criminal statutes to make supporting a terrorist organization an act of treason.

The bill comes amid news that some of the approximately 100 Americans who went to the Middle East to fight with groups like ISIS and al Qaeda's affiliate in Syria have now come back to the U.S.

The list “includes those who have gone, those who have tried to go, those who have come back and are under active ... the FBI is looking at them,” a senior administration official said on Monday.

Aides said Coats plans on speaking with his colleagues on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Department of Homeland Security to move this legislation forward.