Travelers from Muslim Countries Still Jumping U.S. Borders
Aided by human smuggling organizations, many of these Muslim immigrants zigzag wildly across the globe on their way to Latin American countries. Then, they typically move northward to Mexico and into America. Their disparate routes are determined by where they can get bogus travel documents and the presence of lax customs-enforcement practices.
Latin American consulates based in the Middle East are selling tourist visas for bribes or simply issuing them to local travelers without regard to U.S. security concerns. Guatemala is a key stepping stone country through which large numbers of special interest immigrants travel northward and it issues visas with little screening from its consulates in places like Jordan and Egypt. Mexican workers at consulates from Beirut to Belize to Mumbai have been implicated in bribery schemes in which they have sold travel visas to Afghanis, Lebanese, and North Africans.
In 2007, I found that the the U.S. border patrol caught 5,700 of these immigrants crossing since the 9-11 terrorist attacks. Up to an estimated 60,000 more had evaded capture and any sort of screening through terror watch list databases. The Customs and Border Protection service reported finding another 30,000 immigrants from just the four state sponsors of terror in the Middle East between 2001 and 2005 — Syria, Iran, Sudan, and Libya. Granted, that’s a small number when compared with the hundreds of thousands of Latin Americans caught each year. And it’s also true that certain right-wing politicians and pundits have made too much of special interest traffic. The middle truth is that terror watch list screening and investigation determined that most of the captured illegal entrants were coming with no known terrorism intent.
But only the naïve or willfully obtuse would dismiss the logic that if good guys can make it all the way from the Middle East or North Africa then so too could bad guys. In fact, a number of bad guys have come into the U.S. by way of illegal border crossings. Among them was an al-Qaeda operative who was 27th on the FBI’s Most Wanted list, as well as a number of Hezbollah, Hamas, and Tamil Tigers operatives. Government sources say there have been plenty of “hits” on U.S.-bound Muslim travelers caught in Mexico and along the U.S. side of the border. But the American public will not know about these until future historians sue to declassify reports. As Janice Kephart, who served as legal counsel for the 9/11 Commission, told me: “They are not all economic migrants. I do get frustrated when people who live in Washington or Illinois say we don’t have any evidence that terrorists are coming across. But there is evidence.”
The latest border patrol capture figures for special interest aliens show that this traffic has continued unabated through 2007 and 2008, with another 700 being caught at the Mexican border through the end of 2008, and untold numbers more not caught. The majority were caught crossing into Texas, the most populous among them Pakistanis, Somalians, Eritreans, and Filipinos.
Border protection authorities reported significant increases in encounters with Iraqis and Somalians last year, in line with the DHS assessment’s prediction that troubled terrorism habitats far away will send refugees toward Mexico’s border with the U.S. In 2007, Customs and Border Protection apprehended 392 Iraqis illegally trying to sneak in through regular ports of entry with bogus passports received from European-based smugglers. In 2008, 114 Somalians were detained at border crossings compared with 43 the year before. These figures don’t include the hundreds caught trying to cross between points of entry, by swimming the Rio Grande or hiking over land frontiers. Most of the hundreds of Iraqis and Somalians taken into custody were documented only because they turned themselves in and claimed political asylum. But many others were caught trying to sneak in with no intention of doing so.
The glaring question is: Who are all these people who never get caught or turn themselves in and mix into the American population with no background investigation? The number of Iraqis sneaking over the Mexican border is only expected to increase in the next few years, according to the report, and that “ease of access to human smuggling and fraudulent document networks likely would underpin such an increase.”
The report goes on to predict an increase of illegals — due to instability in their countries — from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan, “providing extremists or other illicit actors new opportunities to mask their movements from South Asia. In 2007, individuals with Pakistani citizenship represented the third-largest number of positive Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment match encounters.”
All told, it would be interesting to learn whether the deterrent projected in far-flung lands like Syria and Guatemala will diminish if the Obama administration acts on the most radical of the rollback demands from advocates for Mexican immigrants. There is plenty of statistical and anecdotal evidence to suggest border security efforts have had a far reaching impact. Of a dozen Central Americans in Guatemala who were on their way to America, every one of them had been caught and thrown out five, six, and even seven times — an unprecedented experience. Most were giving up until the so-called “Bush crackdown,” as the migrants called it, was called off. The 2008-2013 threat assessment picked up as much.
“Crossing the border from Mexico illegally along the U.S. Southwest corridor,” the report states, “has become more challenging because of an array of new U.S. security enhancements, such as those implemented under the Secure Border Initiative. Increased border security and law enforcement on the U.S. side have placed further pressures on … alien smugglers.” Al-Qaeda, while still interested in penetrating the Mexican and Canadian borders, “probably retains a preference for legal entry, thus maximizing freedom of movement once inside the country,” the report says.
It may be tempting for President Obama to serve up change to his minions of well-meaning human rights advocates, who are no doubt genuinely concerned about the treatment of job-hunting Mexican migrants. But failure to acknowledge the other people coming in with them carries its own political risk, especially if blame for the loss of American lives is a result.
But isn’t obama going to talk to the terrorists so that they will like us and this won’t be an issue any more? That’s what I heard.
Still waiting for my free stuff.
I am a missionary in Central America. I constantly see and hear about men who murders someone, who rapes a young girl, who is a visious gang member, or who is a drug dealer fleeing to the United States before the police can catch them. Beware, they may move to your neighborhood. My point-close the border.
Are you kidding? This is just gravy to these guy. Anything to destroy the country.
Then they can set up the USSA.
What a disaster these epople are to this country. Is it too late even now to save us?
We are facing the worse crisis of our history.
if they want to take the border fence down then they should take the fence around the white house down at the same time. why does there need to be one around the white house?
What border crackdown? How many millions of illegals crossed the border during Bush’s tenure? 10? 12?
Until the border patrol are considered troops instead of law-enforcement agents, the border will never be secure. Shoot on sight on this side of the border should be the policy. THAT will stop the illegal crossings in a hurry.
Lets not forget their is now probably more fear in the muslim world of pissing off violent Mexican narcos, due to Calderon’s offensive, over payments and travel arrangements before they even get to the border itself. In that sense Calderon’s offensives have probably had the side benefit of deterring amateurs. In that sense, it is much like Michael Moore’s Sicko movie – all it really did was increase PPO participation (a + for the insurance companies), not bring about universal health care.
Bad Former Steeler Quarterback #5-
If so, what will do fat Tejanos do for a fall-back job?
since the housing bubble burst the illegals are moving back…so lets build a fence thats 12 feet high …and they will build a ladder that 14 feet high..yeah lets spend billions on a fence that takes ten minutes to tunnel under oh and remember its really hard to get into mexico(it actually is) but watch out for terrorist they will be coming to get you…so the iraqi navy is on the way over to attack and next santa clause is real and theres a easter bunny
Well, as long as ladders are built here by ‘Mericans, why the heck not?
Making our border impenetrable is probably not possible. Even east germany couldn’t do it, and they had a lot less border. I do think our border should be patrolled by troops and crossers treated as invaders, because that’s what they are.
What will really help, though, is ending the benefit of coming over. Shut down companies that hire them. Do not offer citizenship to their children born here. No free medical care. No food stamps or section 8 housing. No public school for illegals. No one is going to come here to be homeless and starve. And run citizen checks on everyone everytime they have any contact with the police or hospitals. Still prosecute crimes against illegals, but then deport them.
Yeah but, but, but the more illegals that can stick around the more Democratic votes. *sniff-sniff*
War? Who cares about a little ol’ war. Oh fiddle-dee-dee, I’m just a little hot house flower who can’t be concerned with such things! *cranks up the heat in the oval office* Ahhhh. Nice!
I remember back in 2004 and 2005, the local radio stations our here in AZ would cover any stories regarding border crossers who were non from Central or South America. China, Iran, Iraq, Syria, African Nations, etc. There were a number of them. Then I heard a statistic on the radio that as a US Border stat: out of some 150,000 detainees, approximately 3000 were not from the Americas.
This IS why I want a border fence, military sweeps, guard dogs with lasers and rockets mounted on their heads.
If you take that simple stat 3000/150,000 and for just grins apply it to another stat, and to make it easy for the sake of simplified arithmatic bring up the estimated population to say 15,000,000, that would make the ratio of potential non-Central/South American people to say…300,000!
Now of course, that would be an army larger than 2x our standing count in Iraq, and of course (God I hope so) not all of them are on a path to destroy this country, but…
30,000? A mere 0.2% of the total above? That is the amount of troops we want to add to Afghanistan.
3,000? A mere 0.02% of the total above? That is a brigade.
300, 30? How many would it take to wreak serious problems here?
Serious problems:
Car bombs?
Hostages like the school in Russia, or the ballet opera/bloodbath?
Railroad accidents?
Power Plants?
That is why I am for a fence. Yes, it is hard to build these things with our economy the way it is now, but how much cost do we want to encounter with another 9/11 style attack? It has nothing to do with planes. It is cheaper to destroy society than to build it up.
Did anyone see the film clip of Lou Dobbs on CNN? He was discussing the government plan for amnesty submitted. It is the opposite of every item listed above #9. AND the taxpayers will be paying for the illegals amnesty lawyers. This will also include convicted illegals and gang members.Last estimate of illegal gang members was over 20,000. Thank La Raza and groups like this. Even Dobbs was disgusted by the plan.
North American Union. Its for real look up security and prosperity partnership of North America.
James, N.A.U not possible through the S.P.P alone. Only possible with the Universal Health-care (Which under Obama may happen)and the fact that a Union requires parity of nations (not likely to happen anytime soon). If there is to be such a union then Mexico would have to be excluded until it was no longer a 3rd world country. Just look at the construction of the European Union (began in 1957). It actually took 42 years to create a new currency even with predominately socialist countries. All three countries must be forced to learn English, Spanish, and French. You can count out the Mexican government forcing their people to learn their neighbor’s languages. I’m not sure about Canada, but it seems the USA is only concerned about accommodating everyone’s language.
If the powers that be are trying to merge the countries together they are off to a lousy start. This is not something that you could do in secret and expect people to except. That’s why its called a Union, people must be willing to join or it is not a Union at all. If it were to be done back door the appropriate term would be North American Empire home of the Elite whom enslave its people. I doubt a N.A.U. but I don’t doubt a N.A.E. (Think Roman Empire, oppression, high taxes, no freedom of speech, Totalitarian, Dictatorships, Fascist)
Just an observation on the rhetoric many on the extreme right fail to report.
since when is this guy interested in protecting and defending america? and he rattles sabres at north korea. moron.
The Border Patrol in Arizona uses the term OTM (other than Mexicans) to describe illegals from other countries. I cannot believe that the 800 figure used for 2008 is correct. In one haul from Douglas, AZ, two weeks ago there were 28 OTMs in a group of 82 captured. According to one source they included eight Arabs.
This makes the false assumption that Mr Tambourine Man actually thinks.
Skim off some of the stimulus pork money and use it to create 20,000 new border agent jobs, security outposts, a few thousand video cameras and a monitoring / command center.
Money well spent that benefits “ALL” Americans.
I wonder WHAT ticks mr. Bensman to make the call and ask to visit Nicaragua? Is he a defender of the Jewish state? or Is he One of them? We Americans feel the right to do anythiug around the world and poke into the affairs of every nation, and when some body get close to our far away borders even inSouth America, we get irate!!
We want to defend the Jewish state by attacking Iraq and noe preparing to send our soldiers to fight for the Jewish sate and kill Iranians? WHY MR. Bensman??
Keep cool Mr. Bensman, and mind your own business. We sacrifiiced enough to defend the Jewish state. It is time for them to defend themselves, the y got enough A-bombs, so what if Iran has some.
why do you think this worries Obama?
oh Mr. Bill
We sacrifiiced enough to defend the Jewish state. It is time for them to defend themselves, the y got enough A-bombs, so what if Iran has some.
what did you sacrifice, Mr Bill?