July 17, 2007

ABC: Middle Easterners Smuggled Across Southern Border

This news flash from ABC came across my desk during my CQ Radio show:

The FBI is investigating an alleged human smuggling operation based in Chaparral, N.M., that agents say is bringing "Iraqis and other Middle Eastern" individuals across the Rio Grande from Mexico.

An FBI intelligence report distributed by the Washington, D.C. Joint Terrorism Task Force, obtained by the Blotter on ABCNews.com, says the illegal ring has been bringing Iraqis across the border illegally for more than a year. ...

The FBI report, issued last week, says the smuggling organization "used to smuggle Mexicans, but decided to smuggle Iraqi or other Middle Eastern individuals because it was more lucrative." Each individual would be charged a fee of $20,000 to $25,000, according to the report.

The people to be smuggled would "gather at a house on the Mexican side of the border" and then cross the Rio Grande into the U.S., the report says.

"Unidentified individuals would then transport them to train stations in El Paso, Texas or Belen, New Mexico," according to the FBI document.

ABC also reports that the US has mostly refused to allow Iraqi refugees to resettle in the US. Less than 800 had received permission to come here after the invasion, but the Bush administration had agreed to allow over six thousand more by the end of the year. Refugees, of course, usually leave with little more than the shirts on their backs, and for those fleeing the fighting in search of a better life of freedom here, we'd be heartless not to help.

Do you think those are the people paying $25,000 to get across the Rio Grande? Or do you suppose the "refugees" fleeing with those kinds of resources might have something else in mind entirely? And how convenient that they meet at train stations to go to all corners of the country, after paying a small fortune to get across the border illegally.

Remember when the American people demanded that Congress take action to close the border as a national security priority? This is what we meant.

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Comments (25)

Posted by SoldiersMom | July 17, 2007 3:24 PM

I was listening to Hannity this afternoon and he said something that I hadn't thought of before, but realized how true it was. Democrats have done nothing to enhance National Security. They allowed the gathering storm that resulted in 9/11 and have worked tirelessly to defeat every effort to enhance security since. Disgusting.

Posted by AmendmentX | July 17, 2007 3:26 PM

New news is old news. 4-5 years ago there were numerous reports of OTM's (Other Than Mexicans) being smuggled across the border. Prices offered to coyotes for some of these OTM's were up to $50,000. No Mexican who's going to work pounding nails or laying block for some gringo is going to pay $50,000 for the privilege. Arabic reading material has also been left behind in the trash on the border.
And this story made up part of the plot to Tom Clancy's book "Teeth of the Tiger".
"They" are already amongst us. And Swim Champ Kennedy and his ilk and allies in the driveby media take away the means that the Admin uses to discover these people. Yet watch what happens when we get hit. The radical American hating lefties are like people who chop the fireman's hose and then are outraged when the house burns down.

Posted by docjim505 | July 17, 2007 3:52 PM

Folks, there's nothing to worry about! Grand Admiral Reid, Commissar Pelosi, and their allies and toadies in the Congress are getting ready to engineer our surrender in Iraq. Once that's done, all the terrorists in the world will pack up and go home. After all, they didn't exist before Chimpy McBushitler invaded Iraq and have no reason to harm us once we stop stealing Iraq's oil for Halliburton.

/sarcasm

There's plenty of blame to go around on this one. Bush has been chief among idiots on the border issue. It's one thing to encourage immigration. It's another to leave open a huge door into our country when there are people who want nothing more than to come in to commit murder and mayhem. Many people (including me) like to say that we haven't been attacked at home since 9-11. There's truth to this; we've been doing more to keep ourselves safe than we did before 9-11(*). However, I think that there's also been a large element of luck. As near as I can tell, there's damned little to stop bin Laden coming over the Rio Grande with an A-bomb on his back. What will we do when he finally does... and a few hundred thousand Americans pay with their lives for our carelessness?

-----------

Whenever one talks about the lack of counterterrorism efforts prior to 9-11, it almost always degenerates into a "Clinton did this" or "Bush did not do that". We were ALL asleep at the switch on 9-10-01. Let's not go back to sleep now.

Posted by Philip | July 17, 2007 3:59 PM

So. How much of that southern security fence got built today?

Hm.?

Anyone...?

(crickets)

Posted by starfleet_dude | July 17, 2007 4:09 PM

I'm pretty skeptical about the allegations in this report, considering since there's not a single person from the Middle East who has been apprehended after crossing illegally into the U.S. from Mexico. It's not like they would be fluent speakers of Spanish, si?. Now if they do catch someone who's from Iraq, then maybe there's something to it. Otherwise, it might as well be so much fiction from Tom Clancy.

docjim505, besides the problem of first getting an A-bomb and somehow hauling it across the border, it's much easier to sail it into a port, non?

Posted by NoDonkey | July 17, 2007 4:17 PM

As painful as it is for me to agree with sanfran_dude here, I do.

Besides, walling off our entire border, to include Canada, the coasts and Mexico, ain't gonna happen.

Even if you do, you can always get under, over or through whatever is built.

Which is why we need to do as much as possible overseas, to kill these cockroaches and destroy their organization where they live - not wait until they get here.

And dry up their financial support. The kind that the NY Times blew the cover on, BTW.

Posted by Duke DeLand | July 17, 2007 4:17 PM

Starfleet......Got your head in the sand, I see.

Do you possibly suppose anyone coming across the border with $25,000 in his pocket to do so is coming across without someone already here as a contact? These folks are not coming in from Iraq to pick lettuce! Even if that is what Chertoff believes!

The reality is the reports of impending attacks could quite likely be connected to this FBI report, as well as, yet unidentified folks of the same origin coming across the border from the much-more-Muslim-friendly country of Canada.

We'll probably learn all this much too late to help us....say after a certain major event kills many or at the least leaves us afraid and dispirited!

How sad we have Liberals and a President who can see no border evil!

Duke DeLand

Posted by lexhamfox | July 17, 2007 5:27 PM

I think the most efficient way to penetrate the US is to fly or drive across the border rather than go through the discomfort of being smuggled. It costs less too.

It is scandalous that the United States has not taken more of the estimated two million refugess from the Iraq war. That we only plan to take 6,000 is a disgrace as is the fact that we don't help allies like Jordan cope with the massive influx of refugees which are overwhelming their economy.

Posted by starfleet_dude | July 17, 2007 5:57 PM

One reason I think this news about a report is rather suspect is that it blatantly tips off the perps about the FBI being onto them. You'd think the FBI might want to keep this under wraps to better catch those allegedly smuggling in Iraqis, as well as any Iraqis themselves.

Posted by Frantic Freddie | July 17, 2007 6:21 PM

Belen?!? Goin' north thru Albuquerque has it's risks,but head east to Mountainair & come up thru Manzano,Tajique & Chilili.
Drug distribution points all & all filled with anti-American Hispanics.

And people ask me why I carry several guns when I'm down there.

Posted by Grey | July 17, 2007 7:04 PM

This has been a problem for years--rewatched Red Dawn yesterday and in the movie Cubans snuck across the border to prepare for the invasion. And the movie is 25 years old!

Posted by McGehee | July 17, 2007 8:53 PM

One reason I think this news about a report is rather suspect is that it blatantly tips off the perps about the FBI being onto them.

And of course the MSM would never divulge sensitive information to the bad guys, would they? It's never happened before, has it?

<ZAP!>

[grumble grumble] @#$!! lightning...

Posted by starfleet_dude | July 17, 2007 9:07 PM

McGehee, who then is tipping the MSM off about what the FBI knows? IMO, it's someone who wants the allegations to be made public, regardless of whether they're true or not.

Posted by onlineanalyst | July 17, 2007 9:20 PM

It has been known for years that Hezbollah, another of our enemies, has been recruiting/training jihadists in a triangle of countries in South America. These infiltrators, fluent in Spanish, are massed in groups along the Mexican border, easily able to blend in with native Mexican border crossers attempting to illegal enter the US.

Once dispersed across our country into safe houses and cells, they would have no trouble coordinating simultaneous attacks on soft targets-- schools, malls, sports gatherings, electrical power stations and water-treatment plants, etc-- to create a confusing pandemonium of terrorism.

AlQaeda certainly would have no trouble concocting a comparable plan, perhaps through our northern border, to blend into our major metropolis areas. How many doctors and academics have had professional cover of attending conferences in our country and been given a green light by a PC-friendly, non-profiling agent? (After all, it was a group of doctors who attempted the Glasgow caper.)What about students on visas who disappear into our broad country?

The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. We cannot be asleep or passive if something seems amiss in our home areas.

Posted by onlineanalyst | July 17, 2007 9:27 PM

Who tipped the NYT about various methods of tracking terrorist operations?

Cui bono Who benefits?

SF assumes that leaks such as this latest one at ABC originate with government blessing. Why is not the same cynicism aimed at NYT "scoops" via leaks or by unattributed sources? And why are not questions asked about why those were done? Skepticism works both ways.

Posted by John Adams | July 17, 2007 10:24 PM

So, it has taken a year for the pathetic FBI, whose ghastly failure brought us 9/11, to produce the intelligence that Middle Eastern terrorists are being smuggled across the southern border. Wonderful, just wonderful! However, before the laughter begins, let us not forget that this positively silly, ineffectual agency has had to spend much of its time in the investigation of the nationally devastating crime of dog fighting! What next? Will the FBI now divert their attention to Hoover’s favorite interstate crime, investigating New York teenagers, under the Mann Act, for taking their dates two miles over to Hoboken, N.J., for “immoral purposes”? Stay tuned! Maybe we can even get the current FBI bozo in charge to resign for someone who is vaguely responsible to the public, like big city police chiefs! The FBI has been, and remains, a joke. They have learned nothing since 9/11! They continue to grossly waste precious Federal resources on absurd investigations of local amateur crimes that are none of their business. The only solution is the immediate termination of the entire top management of the FBI and their replacement with the type of officials that cleaned up New York City.

Posted by flenser | July 18, 2007 1:19 AM

Of course this is true, although its not new.

http://powerlineblog.com/archives/018175.php

Bensman discovered the existence of a pipeline of illegals from "Countries of Special Interest" -- mostly in the Middle East, almost all Muslim -- that runs through Latin American into the United States. It is a remarkable series. Yet apart from our friend Hugh Hewitt, who immediately highlighted the series on his site and invited Bensman on his show to discuss it, the silence has been deafening. Why? You can answer that question as well as I can.

More than 5,700 illegal migrants from 43 Islamic countries, including State Sponsors of Terror, have been caught while traveling over the Canadian and Mexican borders along well-established underground smuggling routes since 9-11, a traffic that continues daily. People caught coming from these countries in the Middle East, South Asia and North Africa are labeled by our federal law enforcement agencies as "Special Interest Aliens."

starfleet dude, you are dismissed.

Posted by starfleet_dude | July 18, 2007 8:32 AM

More than 5,700 illegal migrants from 43 Islamic countries

Wrong, it was 43 countries who were on the "suspected terrorism" list, including North Korea and other non-Islamic countries. FYI, most were detained at the border after trying to cross legally, and weren't hiring coyotes to get them across the border.

Posted by roc ingersol | July 18, 2007 9:08 AM

I'm more worried about the US/Canada border , specifically Detroit / Windsor tunnel with their high muslim population.

Posted by flenser | July 18, 2007 1:16 PM

sdude, you may want to follow the links and read what you find.

Posted by Jim C | July 18, 2007 7:42 PM

SF Dude,

I guess you didn't bother to read Bensman's story. In it he details at least one Iraqi who was smuggled across the border. Please read the article. You might find it helpful to have the facts.

Jim C

Posted by treehugger | July 18, 2007 8:06 PM

I disagree that we "owe" the Iraqis who have fled a darn thing.

If they won't stay and fight for their country while American soldiers do their work for them, what good are they to us? It was refugees from Iraq that attacked that US solider in the southeast this spring

If they want to run away, they should stay in muslim countries. It's just another avenue for terrorists to enter the US.


Posted by Rose | July 18, 2007 8:32 PM

So! This is a breaking news alert!

Well, so it was - in 2001.

But sleep on, if you please.

But those who are preparing for the aftermath are also preparing for those who refuse to wake up before the flood is neck deep, fully intending to go knocking on THEIR doors, when it "gets serious enough" to have to think about it.

THAT is the FIRST thing the prepared people think of, when they decide to prepare.

You sleepers won't find the red carpet rolled out for you.

Posted by Rose | July 18, 2007 8:39 PM

We were ALL asleep at the switch on 9-10-01. Let's not go back to sleep now.

Posted by: docjim505 at July 17, 2007 3:52 PM
********************

Actually, NOT. But this isn't the America of 100 - 150 - 200 years ago, Americans who felt strongly about something could get something accomplished, many times.

These days, if you don't have the sympathies of the politicians and MSM, you are pretty much strangled. And they will institute a tremendous amounts of red tape, regulations and taxes to stop Americans from many things they could do on their own, which are no harm to America or their community - if they think the "message" is NOT PC.

Posted by Kadang | July 18, 2007 8:57 PM

I guess they are simply coming to do the jihads that Americans won't do...