2 Middle Eastern refugees arrested in California and Texas on terrorism charges

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last updated 8 January 2016

Two men who came to the United States as refugees from the Middle East have been arrested on federal terrorism charges in Texas and California, U.S. officials announced Thursday.

Both are Palestinians born in Iraq, and a source told Reuters that while they were not involved in a single plot, they may have been in contact with each other. Authorities arrested Omar Faraj Saeed al-Hardan in Houston, and Aws Mohammed Younis al-Jayab in Sacramento. Al-Hardeen came to the U.S. as an Iraqi refugee in November 2009, court documents say, and al-Jayab arrived in the U.S. in 2012 as a refugee from Syria.

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

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