Archive for the ‘US Southern border’ category

Beyond Belief: Obama Seeks Illegal Immigration Assistance of Latin American Countries as Aliens Flood into the U.S

August 27, 2016

Beyond Belief: Obama Seeks Illegal Immigration Assistance of Latin American Countries as Aliens Flood into the U.S., Front Page MagazineMichael Cutler, August 26, 2016

alien crossing

On August 24, 2016 Reuters published an astonishing headline, “U.S. seeks Latin American help amid rise in Asian, African migrants.”

This is the sort of headline that might be expected on April First — for the April Fool’s edition of the news. Unfortunately, this is not a bogus headline, but it most certainly is a bogus tactic crafted by the Obama administration.

The borders of the United States are America’s first line of defense and last line of defense against international terrorist organizations and transnational gangs.  However, whenever our government or members of such volunteer organizations as the Minutemen have attempted to stanch the flow of illegal aliens and contraband from Mexico into the United States, the government of Mexico has reacted swiftly and derisively.

Yet Obama is now reportedly seeking assistance from the government of Mexico and has, in the past, sought assistance from Panama and other Latin American countries.

What you need to consider as you read the Reuters account is that the Tri-Border Region of Brazil harbors terror training camps and that members of Hezbollah, Hamas and likely al-Qaeda and ISIS are present in that lawless and dangerous region of the country.

The report claims that illegal aliens from Asia, Africa and the Middle East first head to Brazil to pick up altered or counterfeit passports before heading to the United States.  Whether or not they are getting their passports from the Tri-Border Region of Brazil is open to speculation.  But the dangers that this poses to our national security cannot be over-emphasized.

I delved into the issue of the dangers of the Tri-Border Region of Brazil in a recent FrontPage Magazine article, “Released Gitmo Detainee Goes Missing in Latin America: How Obama’s dash to release terror suspects from Guantanamo threatens U.S. national security.”

The August 24th report published by Reuters begins this way:

Washington is seeking closer coordination with several Latin American countries to tackle a jump in migrants from Asia, Africa and the Middle East who it believes are trying to reach the United States from the south on an arduous route by plane, boat and through jungle on foot.

U.S. agents deployed to an immigration facility on Mexico’s southern border have vetted the more than 640 migrants from countries outside the Americas who have been detained at the center since October 2015, according to U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) documents reviewed by Reuters.

The migrants often fly to Brazil, obtain fake passports there, and are smuggled to Panama before heading through Central America to Mexico’s porous southern border, according to transcripts of 14 interviews conducted at the center and other internal briefing documents seen by Reuters.

The U.S. agents’ findings come as Mexican immigration data show 6,342 Asian, African and Middle Eastern migrants were apprehended trying to enter Mexico in the first six months of this year. That was up from 4,261 in all of 2015, and 1,831 in 2014.

U.S. border apprehensions point to the same trend. Between October 2015 and May 2016, U.S. agents apprehended 5,350 African and Asian migrants at the U.S. Southwest border. That’s up from 6,126 in all of fiscal year 2015 and 4,172 in all of fiscal year 2014.

U.S. concerns about potential security risks from migrants using the unusual and circuitous southern route have been growing in recent years, following a string of Islamic State-inspired attacks in the West and the surge in Syrian refugees fleeing that country’s civil war.

Five Syrian nationals detained in Honduras last November were part of a wider group of seven Syrians who acquired forged passports in Brazil and then went by land to Argentina on their way north, a U.S. government source familiar with that case said. There was no evidence to suggest the men were militants.

That last sentence that there is “no evidence to suggest the men were militants” is utterly meaningless.

Terrorists have been naturalized in the United States months before they carried out their deadly attacks.

The Obama administration’s immigration policies and executive orders have created huge incentives for illegal aliens to enter the United States by any means possible.

Surges of “unaccompanied minors” have been welcomed into the United States by the administration that then moved these illegal aliens into communities around the United States, often connecting them with their supposed illegal alien parents in the United States.  Not surprisingly this has encouraged cyclical surges of still more young illegal aliens to make the dangerous, indeed, often deadly trek through Mexico to the border of the United States.

All too often these illegal aliens are members of gangs who create problems for the schools in which these aliens are enrolled. In one of my recent articles, “The Real Cost of the Administration’s Reckless, Lawless Immigration Policies,” I provided information concerning a hearing on April 19, 2016 conducted by the House Subcommittee on Immigration and Border Security on the topic, “The Real Victims of a Reckless and Lawless Immigration Policy: Families and Survivors Speak Out on the Real Cost of This Administration’s Policies.”

The DACA program (Deferred Action of Childhood Arrivals) has provided hundreds of thousands of illegal alien “DREAMers” with lawful status.  In order to be eligible these aliens may be as old as 31 years of age, but claim that they entered the United States prior to their 16th birthdays.

The administration attempted to extend this lunacy to the parents and family members of these aliens with similar lawful status under DAPA, but was, fortunately, stopped as a result of lawsuits filed by several states.

Hillary Clinton and her running mate, Tim Kaine, have promised that if elected they would, within 90 days of being sworn in, provide lawful status for the unknown millions of illegal aliens who are present in the United States.

During the Republican primaries, most of the Republican candidates claimed it was impossible to arrest and deport 11 million illegal aliens. Therefore, they “reasoned,” since we cannot deport them that we needed to find a way to deal with those already here.  (Of course there would be no way to know when these aliens actually entered the United States.)

These politicians claimed that they would be “tough” on illegal immigration and while they would not provide millions of illegal aliens with “amnesty,” would be “compassionate” and, provided that these aliens paid fines, learned English and jumped through several other largely symbolic but ultimately meaningless hoops, would be granted lawful status.

Because the numbers of these illegal aliens would be so huge, there would be no interviews and no field investigations conducted to substantiate claims made in their applications.  This would create an open invitation for fraud.

In essence, they have all fired the starter’s pistol for aspiring illegal aliens from around the world and for these foreign nationals the border of the United States is the finish line.

It has been said that the prospect of employment by unscrupulous employers that powers the magnet that draws most illegal aliens to the United States.  Today that magnet is powered by the leadership of both political parties.

The official report, “9/11 and  Terrorist TravelStaff Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States” focused specifically on the ability of the terrorists to travel around the world, enter the United States and ultimately embed themselves in the United States as they went about their deadly preparations.and carry out an attack.  The preface of this report begins with the following paragraph:

“It is perhaps obvious to state that terrorists cannot plan and carry out attacks in the United States if they are unable to enter the country. Yet prior to September 11, while there were efforts to enhance border security, no agency of the U.S. government thought of border security as a tool in the counterterrorism arsenal. Indeed, even after 19 hijackers demonstrated the relative ease of obtaining a U.S. visa and gaining admission into the United States, border security still is not considered a cornerstone of national security policy. We believe, for reasons we discuss in the following pages, that it must be made one.”

Page 46 and 47 of this report noted:

“Once terrorists had entered the United States, their next challenge was to find a way to remain here. Their primary method was immigration fraud. For example, Yousef and Ajaj concocted bogus political asylum stories when they arrived in the United States. Mahmoud Abouhalima, involved in both the World Trade Center and landmarks plots, received temporary residence under the Seasonal Agricultural Workers (SAW) program, after falsely claiming that he picked beans in Florida.” 

Page 61 contained this passage:

Exploring the Link between Human Smugglers and Terrorists 

In July 2001, the CIA warned of a possible link between human smugglers and terrorist groups, including Hamas, Hezbollah, and Egyptian Islamic Jihad.   Indeed, there is evidence to suggest that since 1999 human smugglers have facilitated the travel of terrorists associated with more than a dozen extremist groups.  With their global reach and connections to fraudulent document vendors and corrupt government officials, human smugglers clearly have the “credentials” necessary to aid terrorist travel. 

This paragraph is found on page 98 under the title “Immigration Benefits:”

Terrorists in the 1990s, as well as the September 11 hijackers, needed to find a way to stay in or embed themselves in the United States if their operational plans were to come to fruition. As already discussed, this could be accomplished legally by marrying an American citizen, achieving temporary worker status, or applying for asylum after entering. In many cases, the act of filing for an immigration benefit sufficed to permit the alien to remain in the country until the petition was adjudicated. Terrorists were free to conduct surveillance, coordinate operations, obtain and receive funding, go to school and learn English, make contacts in the United States, acquire necessary materials, and execute an attack.

It is stupefying to imagine that the United States would, as the Reuters report noted, send U.S. Border Patrol agents to the southern border of Mexico to seek to work with the Mexican government to address the illegal aliens flowing into Mexico, apparently destined to ultimately enter the United States.

Mexico’s primary industries include petroleum and narcotics smuggling. Mexican Drug Trafficking Organizations essentially control the Mexican side of the U.S./Mexican border and Mexico has become addicted to the drug money flowing into Mexico from the United States as well as the remittances wired back to Mexico from their citizens working illegally in the United States.

Apparently the government of Mexico and the administration have now become “Partners in Crime” and the security of America and Americans hang in the balance.

916 Illegals From Terror-Linked Countries Apprehended Since 2014

August 25, 2016

916 Illegals From Terror-Linked Countries Apprehended Since 2014, BreitbartEdwin Mora, August 25, 2016

caughtJohn Moore/Getty Images

U.S. Border Patrol agents apprehended at least 916 illegal immigrants from countries linked to terrorism trying to sneak into the United States across the Southwest border in 2014 and 2015, according to a Breitbart News tally gleaned from federal datareleased under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

During that period, nearly 370 may have successfully entered the United States, according to U.S. government estimate of “gotaways.”

The number of illegals from terror-linked countries, officially known as Special Interest Aliens (SIAs), arrested along the U.S.-Mexico border has nearly doubled to 462 in 2015 alone, from 255 in 2011, the last year for which the government released data without a FOIA request.

Although thousands of illegals have been apprehended recently at the Southwest border from nearly all countries in Asia, the Middle East, and Africa, only a portion of them are from nations that have been officially linked to terrorism.

At least 867 of the 916 terror-linked illegals who were detained at the U.S.-Mexico border over the last two years are from in and around countries where the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) has launched attacks and carried out recruitment operations, including:

Afghanistan (4); Pakistan (65); Egypt (15); Bangladesh (579); Iraq (11); Iran (11); Jordan (5); Turkey (80); Saudi Arabia (25); United Arab Emirates (1); Lebanon (3); Kuwait (6); Somalia (4); Turkmenistan (1); Tajikistan (4); Uzbekistan (7); Philippines (44); and Yemen (2).

The U.S. military warned that there are networks in Latin American that specialize in smuggling in illegals from countries affiliated with terrorism. Moreover, the military has sounded the alarm on jihadi operations in the region carried out by ISIS and the Shiite Lebanese terror group Hezbollah, an Iranian proxy.

Breitbart News analyzed records for fiscal years 2014 and 2015 released by the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency in response to various FOIA requests. CBP is a component of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (CBP). The U.S. Border Patrol is an arm of CBP.

The FOIA documents reveal that on average, for nearly every 10 attempted illegal crossings at the U.S. Mexico border, about four people actually got through in 2013, the latest year for which data of successful entries, or “getaways,” has been made public.

Bases on those figures, Breitbart News estimates that nearly 370 illegal migrants from terror-linked countries may have successfully entered the United States in 2014 (182) and 2015 (189).

It is unclear how many of the SIAs were released into U.S. communities during immigration proceedings.

However, a government estimate released in 2006 reveals that nearly half of the terror-linked aliens who are apprehended are subsequently released into U.S. communities. Nearly 85 percent were projected to abscond upon being released.

In 2015 alone, the U.S. government apprehended at least 480 illegals from terror-linked countries in between official ports of entry at or near the Southwest (462), Northern (10), and Coastal (8) borders.

The figures available for the Northern and Coastal borders only cover migrants arrested during four months of 2015 (June 1 thru Sept. 30), which means the overall apprehension figure could be much larger.

In 2014, U.S. border authorities detained 454 migrants from terror-linked countries along the U.S.-Mexico border alone. There was no data available for apprehensions at the other borders.

Illegals from terror-linked countries are officially known as Special Interest Aliens (SIAs). They come from 34 countries located in Asia, the Middle East, and Africa as well as the territories of West Bank and Gaza.

The FOIA records did not include the number of illegals from those territories. However, the data does show that there were four from Israel detained at the Southwest border in 2014 and 16 the following year.

Moreover, at least three from Israel were arrested at the Northern (2) and Coastal (1) borders during part of 2015. The migrants from Israel are not included in Breitbart News’ count of SIAs.

Most Special Interest Aliens apprehended along the U.S.-Mexico border during 2014 (284) and 2015 (295) are from Bangladesh. The majority are males between 20 and 50 years old apprehended  in Texas.

The U.S. government has been hesitant to release SIAs apprehension data. The last time those figures were made public was in 2011.

Leaked documents obtained by Breitbart Texas revealed information for 2014, the latest figures available until this report.

The data obtained by Breitbart Texas shows that at least 474 migrants from terror-linked countries were detained at all U.S. borders during most of 2014.

Of those, at least 454 were arrested at the U.S.-Mexico Border alone, according to Breitbart News Analysis.

While the number of SIAs apprehensions along the Southwest border have surged, those near or at the Northern and Coastal borders appear to have dramatically declined since 2011.

According to the latest assessment using a metric that was dropped by the Obama administration, federal authorities controlled less than half of the nearly 2,000-mile long Southwest border and about 2 percent of the estimated 4,000-mile long Northern border as of 2010.

The data extracted from the FOIA records show the following number of SIAs primarily apprehended along the U.S.-Mexico border over the last two years: (The columns are the same in the original Breitbart article. — DM)

                                2014           2015                      Coastal                       Northern

Afghanistan                                  4
Algeria                       1                1
Bahrain
Bangladesh              284             295                            1
Djibouti
Egypt                        15                                                2
Eritrea                       6                  4
Indonesia                  5                  1
Iran                           2                  9                                                                  1
Iraq                           4                  7
Jordan                       3                  2                              1                                  1
Kazakhstan                                   1                                                                  1
Kuwait                      3                  3                                                                  1
Lebanon                    2                  1                              1
Libya
Malaysia                                       2
Mauritania
Morocco                    2                  1
Oman
Pakistan                    17                48                             1
Philippines                28               16                              1
Qatar                          1
Saudi Arabia             16                9                                                                 1
Somalia                      3                 1                                                                 1
Sudan                                                                            1
Syria                          5                  5
Tajikistan                   1                  3
Thailand                    8                  5
Tunisia                                          1
Turkey                     43                 37                                                                3
Turkmenistan            1                                                                                     1
UAE                                               1
Uzbekistan                2                   5
Yemen                       2

Totals:                      454               462                          8                           10

 

FULL MEASURE Episode 44: July 31, 2016 Parts I and II

August 2, 2016

FULL MEASURE Episode 44: July 31, 2016 via YouTube Parts I and II, August 2, 2016 — Sanctuary for illegal aliens

Part I

 

Part II

According to the blurb beneath both videos,

Hundreds of U.S. cities have laws in place that help shield illegal immigrants from deportation – even after they’ve committed felonies. Full Measure takes an in-depth look at illegal immigrants, the crimes they’re committing and sanctuary cities.

Across the Border

June 3, 2016

Across the Border, Power LineScott Johnson, June 3, 2016

(Somehow, Mr. Johnson seems to have missed this information from the Washington Times:

The group of six men nabbed inside the U.S. — the Afghan and five men identified as Pakistanis — all made asylum claims when they were eventually caught by the Border Patrol. Mr. Hunter said his understanding is that the five men from Pakistan were released based on those claims and have disappeared.

— DM)

At the Washington Times Stephen Dinan has a timely scoop that highlights the national security implications of our porous border with Mexico. Dinan reports:

A smuggling network has managed to sneak illegal immigrants from Middle Eastern terrorism hotbeds straight to the doorstep of the U.S., including helping one Afghan who authorities say was part of an attack plot in North America.

Immigration officials have identified at least a dozen Middle Eastern men smuggled into the Western Hemisphere by a Brazilian-based network that connected them with Mexicans who guided them to the U.S. border, according to internal government documents reviewed by The Washington Times.

Those smuggled included Palestinians, Pakistanis and the Afghan man who Homeland Security officials said had family ties to the Taliban and was “involved in a plot to conduct an attack in the U.S. and/or Canada.” He is in custody, but The Times is withholding his name at the request of law enforcement to protect investigations.

Some of the men handled by the smuggling network were nabbed before they reached the U.S., but others made it into the country. The Afghan man was part of a group of six from “special-interest countries.”

Rep. Duncan Hunter appears to have given Dinan a hand with his story:

The group, guided by two Mexicans employed by the smuggling network, crawled under the border fence in Arizona late last year and made it about 15 miles north before being detected by border surveillance, according to the documents, which were obtained by Rep. Duncan Hunter, California Republican.

As the Obama administration imports a wave of immigrants from Syria and forces them down our throats at locations unknown around the country, Dinan also adds this timely note:

[T]he documents obtained by Mr. Hunter confirm fears of a pipeline that can get would-be illegal immigrants from terrorist hotbeds to the threshold of the U.S.

Just as troubling, the Border Patrol didn’t immediately spot the Afghan man’s terrorist ties because the database that agents first checked didn’t list him. It wasn’t until agents checked an FBI database that they learned the Afghan may be a danger, the documents say.

Dinan’s current scoop follows up on his December 2015 story “Agents nab Pakistanis with terrorist connections crossing U.S. border.” At Politifact (!), Joshua Gillin has a useful roundup of such stories.

Do you suppose that others fitting the profile Dinan sketches have made it across the border undetected? I do. And that porous border with Mexico — President Obama means for us to keep it that way.

Should the U.S. Build an “ISIS Wall”?

May 5, 2016

Should the U.S. Build an “ISIS Wall”? Gatestone InstituteRaymond Ibrahim, May 5, 2016

♦ “If you really want to protect Americans from ISIS, you secure the southern border. It’s that simple.” — Rep. Duncan Hunter.

♦ The Department of Homeland Security denied Hunter’s claims, called them “categorically false” and added that “no credible intelligence to suggest terrorist organizations are actively plotting to cross the southwest border.” Days later, however, it was confirmed that “4 ISIS Terrorists” were arrested crossing the border into Texas.

♦ Under Obama’s presidency alone, 2.5 million illegals have crossed the border. And those are just the ones we know about. How many of these are ISIS operatives, sympathizers or facilitators?

♦ Securing the U.S.-Mexico border — with an electronic fence, which has worked so effectively in Israel — is more urgent than we think.

Of all the reasons a majority of Americans support the plan of businessman and U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump to “build a wall” along the U.S.-Mexico border, perhaps the most critical is to avoid letting terrorists into the country. Drugs enter, the victims of traffickers enter, but the most imminent danger comes from operatives of the Islamic State (ISIS) and like-minded groups that are trying to use this porous border as a way to smuggle weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) into the United States and launch terror attacks that could make 9/11 seem like a morning in May.

Just last week, “One of the American men accused in Minnesota of trying to join the Islamic State group wanted to open up routes from Syria to the U.S. through Mexico… Guled Ali Omar told the ISIS members about the route so that it could be used to send members to America to carry out terrorist attacks, prosecutors alleged in a document.”

ISIS, however, did not need to be “told” by Ali “about the route.” Nearly a year earlier, ISIS explored options on how it could smuggle a WMD “into the U.S. through Mexico by using existing trafficking networks in Latin America.”

The Islamic State’s magazine Dabiq last May (issue #9) published the following scenario:

Let me throw a hypothetical operation onto the table. The Islamic State has billions of dollars in the bank, so they call on their wilāyah [province] in Pakistan to purchase a nuclear device through weapons dealers with links to corrupt officials in the region. … The weapon is then transported over land until it makes it to Libya, where the mujāhidīn [jihadis] move it south to Nigeria. Drug shipments from Columbia bound for Europe pass through West Africa, so moving other types of contraband from East to West is just as possible. The nuke and accompanying mujāhidīn arrive on the shorelines of South America and are transported through the porous borders of Central America before arriving in Mexico and up to the border with the United States. From there it’s just a quick hop through a smuggling tunnel and hey presto, they’re mingling with another 12 million ‘illegal’ aliens in America with a nuclear bomb in the trunk of their car.

The ISIS publication added that if not a nuke, “a few thousand tons of ammonium nitrate explosive,” which is easily manufactured, could be smuggled.

Such thinking is hardly new. Back in 2009, a Kuwaiti cleric explained how easy it would be to murder countless Americans by crossing through the Mexican border:

Four pounds of anthrax — in a suitcase this big — carried by a fighter through tunnels from Mexico into the U.S. are guaranteed to kill 330,000 Americans within a single hour if it is properly spread in population centers there. What a horrifying idea; 9/11 will be small change in comparison. Am I right? There is no need for airplanes, conspiracies, timings and so on. One person, with the courage to carry 4 pounds of anthrax, will go to the White House lawn, and will spread this ‘confetti’ all over them, and then we’ll do these cries of joy. It will turn into a real celebration.

Plans aside, ISIS and other Islamic terrorists are based in and coming from Mexico. The evidence is piling up. In August 2014, Judicial Watch reported that ISIS was “operating in the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez and planning to attack the United States with car bombs or other vehicle borne improvised explosive devices.” Months later in April 2015, ISIS was exposed operating in the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua — eight miles from the U.S.

In October 2014, Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif) said, “I know that at least 10 ISIS fighters have been caught coming across the Mexican border in Texas.” The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) emphatically denied Hunter’s claims, called them “categorically false” and added that “no credible intelligence to suggest terrorist organizations are actively plotting to cross the southwest border.” Days later, however, it was confirmed that “4 ISIS Terrorists” were arrested crossing the border into Texas.

On September 20, 2015, “U.S. Border Patrol nabbed two Pakistani men with ties to terrorism at the U.S.-Mexico border. … Both men … took advantage of smuggling networks or other routes increasingly used by Central American illegal immigrants to sneak into the U.S.”

This is uncomfortably reminiscent of the scenario outlined in the ISIS magazine: after naming Pakistan as the nation from which to acquire nukes — the two men arrested for “ties to terrorism” were from Pakistan — the Dabiq excerpt explained: “The nuke and accompanying mujāhidīn… are transported through the porous borders of Central America before arriving in Mexico and up to the border with the United States. From there it’s just a quick hop through a smuggling tunnel.”

On December 2, 2015, “A Middle Eastern woman was caught surveilling a U.S. port of entry on the Mexican border holding a sketchbook with Arabic writing and drawings of the facility and its security system.” Around the same time, “five young Middle Eastern men were apprehended by the U.S. Border Patrol in Amado, an Arizona town situated about 30 miles from the Mexican border. Two of the men were carrying stainless steel cylinders in backpacks…”

These arrests clearly indicate that Islamic terrorists are crossing the border into the U.S. For every illegal person caught, how many are not? One estimate says that at best only half of those illegally crossing the border are ever apprehended. Under Obama’s presidency alone, 2.5 million illegals have crossed the border. And those are just the ones we know about. How many of these are ISIS operatives, sympathizers or facilitators? Border guards cannot even be “especially alert” for terrorists: many easily blend in with native Mexicans.

Three facts are undisputed: 1) ISIS and other terrorist groups see Mexico as a launching pad for terrorist acts in the U.S.; 2) ISIS and other terrorist groups have bases of operations in Mexico; 3) Members of ISIS and other terrorist groups have been caught trying to enter through the border.

In other words, it is just a matter of time. As Rep. Duncan Hunter once put it:

If you really want to protect Americans from ISIS, you secure the southern border. It’s that simple. ISIS doesn’t have a navy, they don’t have an air force, they don’t have nuclear weapons. The only way that ISIS is going to harm Americans is by coming in through the southern border — which they already have.

Just as before 9/11 — when U.S. leadership had received ample warnings of a spectacular terrorist attack targeting the U.S. — this problem may well be ignored until a spectacular attack occurs: San Bernardino was apparently too small, it did not count. Then, it will be more of the usual from the comatose media and many politicians: “shock,” handwringing, and appeals against “Islamophobia.”

Securing the U.S.-Mexico border — with an electronic fence, which has worked so effectively in Israel — is more urgent than we think.

1581The Israeli-built border fence between Israel and Egypt, completed in December 2013, put a complete stop to illegal infiltration from Egypt into Israel. Before the fence was built, many terrorists, traffickers, and drug smugglers crossed the border each year. (Image source: Idobi/Wikimedia Commons)