Although the federal government refuses to secure the U.S. border, "U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced Sunday that he has ordered American military ships, including an aircraft carrier and additional aircraft, to move closer to the eastern Mediterranean in response to Hamas' unprecedented, multi-fronted attack on Israel."
The Counsel on Foreign Relations published an article last month downplaying the risk of Islamic terrorist crossing the border, trotting out the tired argument that the greater risk is from "white supremacists". But the fact that we have not yet had such an attack does not mean it is not possible. Hezbollah, for instance, is known to have established networks throughout the United States (see, "Hezbollah's Operations And Networks In The United States: Two Decades In Review" by Anyssia S. Kokinos, Nakissa P. Jahanbani, Jon Lewis, and Devorah Margolin published by George Washington University, the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, and the National Counterterrorism Innovation, Technology, and Education Center (NCITE)). Although not included in the paper, the authors had also researched people outside the United States that had been indicted in the United States. One such case involved a Hezbollah operative in Venezuela that was actively recruiting Hamas to conduct attacks on the United States. It relates (footnotes omitted):
For example, Adel El Zabayar, a former member of the Venezuelan National Assembly, was charged in 2020 in the Southern District of New York with participating in a narco-terrorism conspiracy, as well as drug and firearms charges. El Zabayar is accused of conspiring with members of the Cártel de Los Soles to recruit and train Hezbollah and Hamas operatives at clandestine training camps in Venezuela for the purpose of carrying out attacks on U.S. soil. Cártel de Los Soles is comprised of high-ranking Venezuelan officials who seek to use Venezuelan institutions to facilitate the importation of cocaine into the United States. Members of Cártel de Los Soles reportedly instructed El Zabayar to travel to Syria and Palestine to obtain weapons and recruit members of Hezbollah and Hamas. He allegedly returned from the Middle East with a cargo plane full of weapons, including “rocket-propelled grenade launchers, AK-103s, and sniper rifles.” El Zabayar has not been arrested, and his case remains pending in the Southern District of New York.
As of July, 160 migrants whose identities match those on the Terrorist Screening Dataset had been apprehended by Customs and Border Protection trying to cross the U.S.-Mexico border during fiscal year 2023, compared to 100 in fiscal year 2022. Fiscal years end on Sept. 30.The number of all people, including U.S. citizens, on the terrorist watchlist who had been stopped at the southern border as of July this fiscal year was 216, compared to 165 in all of fiscal year 2022. The number of border crossers on the watchlist was higher in fiscal year 2019, at 280.A DHS official told reporters that the increase from fiscal 2022 to 2023 is consistent with the overall increase in migrants crossing the border and the rising number of migrants coming from areas of conflict.
The number of migrants from the Eastern Hemisphere more than doubled, from 110,000 in fiscal year 2022 to 228,000 so far in fiscal year 2023, the Homeland Threat Assessment said. The Eastern Hemisphere includes Africa and the Middle East, among other areas.
And just remember that those on the terrorist watch list stopped at the border only include those actually intercepted (who knows how many escaped) and only those on the terrorist watch list.
And just because there are no known successful acts of terrorism, it doesn't mean it hasn't been tried. One example is former al Qaeda fighter Shihab Ahmed Shihab Shihab who was arrested and pled guilty to attempting to smuggle at least 4 Iraqi nationals into the United States to assassinate former president George W. Bush, according to the New York Post.
A former al Qaeda fighter who killed many US soldiers during the early phases of the Iraq War, Shihab himself somehow managed to fly into an American airport with a tourist visa under intelligence radars in September 2020, before this mass-migration crisis began.
He overstayed the tourist visa, lodged an asylum claim forestalling deportation and began contemplating the border, an arrest-warrant affidavit shows.
As border defenses collapsed, Shihab clearly realized that crossing terrorist operatives among the millions had become less risky than the tourist-visa-overstay method he’d used.
He claimed to undercover FBI informants that he’d successfully smuggled in two Hezbollah operatives over it, the records allege, without elaboration, then turned to replicating that success for the Bush assassination.
The article adds:
Plans called for at least four of eight Thunder terrorists to pay $40,000 each for travel into Brazil on fraudulently obtained visas, then go up through the notorious Darien Gap jungle-smuggling passage between Colombia and Panama.
A record-setting 250,000 immigrants from 150 countries crossed through the gap in 2022, compared with fewer than 10,000 most years in normal times, for perspective.
From Central America, Shihab’s terrorists would meld unnoticed with the multinational masses moving north to the US-Mexico border, then cross maybe wearing faux Border Patrol uniforms, the informants reported.
As the plot progressed, Shihab actually flew to Texas and conducted surveillance of Bush’s homes in Dallas and a central Texas ranch. He was figuring out how to provision weapons for the arriving operatives for when they could stalk and kill Bush.
And, finally:
So many immigrants are now coming from countries of terrorism concern in the Middle East, South Asia and North Africa that a nonprofit saw enough demand for services to open up a shelter in Tijuana last April, just two blocks from the border wall, that caters only to Muslims.
It’s always packed to capacity with Muslim migrants of unknown and unchecked backgrounds who all plan to cross into America one way or another.
When I investigated this facility last fall, I met Russian Chechens, Tajikistanis, Syrians, Uzbeks and Somalis.
The shelter’s director admitted in November that since her grand opening, no one from American intelligence had ever reached out to ask her anything, and neither had the Mexicans.
More:
- "Are terrorists crossing the US-Mexico border? Excerpts from the case file."--Christian Science Monitor (2017).
- "Hezbollah Isn’t Just in Beirut. It’s in New York, Too."--Foreign Policy (2019).
- "Will Qassem Soleimani’s Death Activate Sleeper Cells in America?"--The Daily Beast (2020).
- "Smuggler with extremist ties helped Uzbeks cross US-Mexico border, US says"--Reuters (2023).
- "What to Make of CNN’s Exclusive About an ISIS Smuggler Who Moved Uzbeks Over the Border"--Center for Immigration Studies (2023).
They'd head straight for New York City, one would think.
ReplyDeleteProbably. It and Hollywood are the about the only two cities in the U.S. that they know by name.
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