FBI Director Robert Mueller testified before Congress today that illegal aliens from countries with significant al-Qaeda ties have crossed the Mexican border into the US, while terrorists have now begun assuming Hispanic last names to blend into the flood of immigrants:

"We are concerned, Homeland Security is concerned about special interest aliens entering the United States," Mueller said, using a term for people from countries where al-Qaida is known to be active.

Under persistent questioning from Rep. John Culberson, R-Texas, Mueller said he was aware of one route that takes people to Brazil, where they assume false identities, and then to Mexico before crossing the U.S. border.

He also said that in some instances people with Middle Eastern names have adopted Hispanic last names before trying to get into the United States.

Our inability to secure our Southern border amounts to the single most embarassing and preventable security lapse since 9/11. This has little to do with the FBI but with an administration and Congress that believes it needs a comprehensive solution to illegal immigration before it can act to secure the border. This thinking flies in the face of our other post-9/11 strategies, where we have avoided attacking everyone at once in favor of tactically playing out our strategy in one hot theater at a time.

We need to come up with a grand strategy for dealing with the immigrants already here, but we must act immediately to secure the border. The rest can wait until later. The analysis paralysis we have accepted for the past decade or more will eventually kill us. In fact, it may already have, and we have yet to discover it.

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» Mueller: Special Interest Aliens Crossed into the U.S. from In the Bullpen
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