President Barack Obama has ignored 72 documented cases of terrorist activity by suspected Muslim immigrants inside the United States since July 2014, a Republican senator has charged.

In a speech on the Senate floor Thursday night, Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama said Obama's plans to accept more refugees from Syria is a recipe for disaster that will only repeat what's happening now in Europe, WND reported.

He said Congress can still stop the president from his misguided plan by using its biggest power – the power of the purse – to stop the flow of Muslim refugees with likely terrorists among them.

Sessions said earlier this year his office sent to the White House the list of terrorist plots, many of them foiled by the FBI before they could be carried out, and asked for the immigration histories of each of the suspects.

Sen. Ted Cruz also co-signed the request sent to the Obama administration with an attached list of 72 individuals charged or convicted of terrorism.

Sessions said they just wanted to know how the terrorists got into the country. But "stunningly, the administration just refused to respond," he said.

The senator said Obama must be thinking that if he ignores these requests then people won't know what's really going on. "Congress should not acquiesce to the president's refugee funding request when he refuses to even publicly disclose the immigration histories of these 72 terrorists, many of whom are connected to ISIS – al-Qaeda and ISIS," he said.

"The president persists in this plan even though his own officials, testifying before my [immigration] subcommittee, conceded there is no database in Syria with which to vet refugees. Moreover, as his officials concluded, there is no way to prevent refugees from radicalising after their entrance to the U.S – just as has happened unfortunately with Somali refugees," Sessions said.

"So it's an unpleasant but unavoidable fact that bringing in large unassimilated flows of migrants from the Muslim world creates the conditions possible for radicalisation and extremism to take hold, just like they're seeing in Europe," he said.

The senator said the apprehension is certainly valid as the FBI director has revealed that there are now active ISIS investigations in all 50 states. "They've got a terrorist investigation involving ISIS in every state today. I think there are 900 open cases," he said.

Sessions noted that the Syrian refugees already in the United States are more than 97 percent Muslims. Moreover, he said there is growing evidence that Muslim officials within the United Nations refugee camps are discriminating heavily against Christians.

Sessions has called for Congress to defund Obama's refugee programme, rather than just ask for greater assurances that refugees can be vetted, as what Speaker Paul Ryan's bill, passed by the House Thursday, sought.

Sessions, a former federal prosecutor, derided the Obama administration and its political and religious supporters for depicting the refugees as "widows and orphans" deserving of humane treatment.

He said this is just political "spin" meant to portray critics as mean or unkind.

"We have our own problems. We've had 9/11, the Boston bombers, Chattanooga shooter, and look what's happening in Europe. So I don't think the American people are mean or unkind. They're just rightly concerned to protect their families, their nation and their interest," he said.