Ten Percent of Twin Falls Police Officers Are Refugees

twin falls
Lee Stranahan

Seven of the seventy-two sworn police officers currently employed by the Twin Falls police department are resettled refugees.

Bosnia Herzegovina is the country of origin for all seven officers, said Joshua Palmer, the spokesperson for the Twin Falls police department which is responsible for the ongoing investigation into the alleged rape of the five-year-old American-born girl which involved three young Muslim refugees.

“One was originally from Croatia, but moved to Bosnia Herzegovina about one year before the [1992] conflict started,” Palmer adds. All seven are now U.S. citizens, Palmer says.

When Breitbart News asked Palmer what percentage of the 44,000 residents of Twin Falls are refugees, Palmer said, “We have asked for — but have not received — those figures from the College of Southern Idaho’s Refugee Program and Department of State, which oversee and operate the refugee program in our community.”

“The following is the most recent information we have received for City of Twin Falls Demographics: 82.1% ‘white alone’; 13.1% ‘hispanic or latino’; 1.8% ‘asian alone’; and .9% ‘american indian or alaska native alone’; .7% ‘black or african american alone’; and .5% ‘native hawiian and pacific islander alone’,” Palmer said in a statement.

The “white alone’ category include immigrants from Europe and the Middle East.

Fifty-one percent of the population in Bosnia and Herzegovina self-identifies as Muslim, acccording to the 2013 Census of Population,

The seven resettled refugee officers help police the incoming refugees populations, which are being brought into the Twin Falls to serve as cheap workers in the food processing sector in place of hiring Americans.

The College of Southern Idaho Refugee Program [CSIRP] is the local affiliate of the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, which is paid to bring refugees into the United States. It reports that since 1983 “the CSIRP has resettled more than 2500 refugees from a variety of different continents; providing local businesses with a steady source of entry level workers.”

The Program has also brought more than $3 million of federal money and benefits back to the Magic Valley that have been used to purchase goods and services from local merchants. It has also been a source of students pursuing career and professional upgrades through the College of Southern Idaho. Many former refugees now hold prominent positions in the Twin Falls community.

CSIRP is the only provider of refugee specific services for South-Central Idaho.

“During the past twenty-six years, there have been a large number of different ethnic groups arriving in the Twin Falls area,” the CSIRP reports.

The countries of origins of those refugees have differed dramatically by decade.

“Between 1982 and 1992,” the CSIRP notes, refugees were “Vietnamese, Polish, Russian, Hungarian, Bulgarian, Laotian, and [from the] former Soviet Union.”

From “1993 to 2011,” refugees were “Bosnian, Croat, Serbian, Iranian, Iraqi, Burmese, Russian, Vietnamese, Burundi, Mesketian Turks, Eritreans, and Bhutanese.”

Since 2012, the year the Chobani Yogurt factory opened in Twin Falls, refugees have primarily been “Afghani, Congolese, Sudanese, Iranian, Iraqi, Bhutanese, Burmese, and Eritreans.”

Most of these refugees arriving in Twin Falls since 2012 are from Muslim majority countries.

Dzevad Mustafic became the fifth resettled refugee to serve the city as a police officer when he joined the Twin Falls Police Department in 2015. Since then, two more resettled refugees have been added to the force:

Mustafic is joining four other officers in the Twin Falls Police Department who immigrated to the United States through a refugee program. City spokesman Joshua Palmer said all four officers often help with certain cases others aren’t as equipped to handle because of their backgrounds . . .
Because of their background, some of the officers with refugee connections have had to be placed in difficult situations such as being security for public discussions weighing the worth of the refugee program, or when a Washington pastor came to Twin Falls and spoke against the College of Southern Idaho refugee program.
“I know that was really hard for some of the guys,” Palmer said.

As Breitbart News reported, Mustafic was the arresting officer in the recent case of Mulugeta Zemu Mana, an Eritrean refugee charged with aggravated battery in Twin Falls recently against another refugee who resides in Twin Falls, Samuel Gebreegziabher..

 

COMMENTS

Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.