Welcome to America—Terrorists, Drug Traffickers and Open Borders

[Woodmonkey]

Welcome to America—Terrorists, Drug Traffickers and Open Borders

In the wake of 9-11, U.S. officials working to fight the international drug trade have warned that al-Qaida and other Islamic terrorists may be trying to forge links with the powerful drug traffickers in Colombia and Mexico. In March 2004, Harold Wankel, the assistant administrator for intelligence at the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), told a panel discussion hosted by ABC News in New York that “if al Qaida comes to South America and (if) they need to get something done in the United States that requires movement, … they need…to go to the people who are professionals, the people that are the best at it, and that is the Colombian-Mexican organized criminal groups that are closely aligned these days.”

Recent developments have raised the concerns that this collaboration may be underway. Last December, for instance, Mexican drug trafficker Noel Exinia revealed to authorities through wiretap conversations that he plotted to smuggle from Mexico into the U.S. twenty Iraqis whom he said were terrorists. Exinia referred to the Iraqis as “Osama’s People” and described them “really bad people.” The authorities arrested the drug trafficker before he could realize his plans, and he was convicted of drug importation drugs. Exinia’s lawyer has since denied that his client was involved in any smuggling plot.

Then this past February 3, Terry Simons, the chief deputy in Val Verde County, claimed that drug traffickers were helping terrorists with al Qaida ties sneak across the porous Texas-Mexico border. He also told a meeting of congressmen that Texas law enforcement officials have recently established narco-terrorists camps in Mexico, where trainees are taught “escape and evasion, as well as fighting techniques and combat maneuvering.”

Law enforcement officials well familiar with the U.S.-Mexico border say such developments, while disturbing, do not verify a narco-terrorist link in Mexico. “There always the possibility, but I operate on evidence, and where is the hard evidence?” said Ed Kacerosky, a Miami, Florida-based special agent with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Department. “I’ve seen none.”

Other sources agreed with Kacerosky that Sheriff Simons has produced no hard evidence to support his warning. One source from the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), who requested anonymity, added, “I don’t see what would be in it for the drug traffickers to smuggle Islamic terrorists. They are so powerful and already make more money from the drug trade than they can handle.”

Another source, however, pointed out that there is no love lost between the Mexican drug traffickers and the U.S. government. “We are trying to extradite the Mexican drug lords to the U.S. and some of them have made the FBI’s most wanted list,” he explained.

Several sources noted that the terrorists have many ways to enter the U.S., such as getting across the equally porous U.S.-Canada border and even speed boating to shore off the U.S. coast, as Colombian drug traffickers liked to do in Florida in the 1980s. But they acknowledged no smuggling route has as many human trafficking possibilities with an Islamic terrorist potential as does the U.S.-Mexico border. “It’s a hopeless situation,” one DOJ official admitted candidly. It’s like trying to keep people out of your backyard without putting a fence around it.”

A DEA official agreed. “We hear a lot about Mexican nationals dying in the desert trying to get into the U.S.,” he explained. ‘But in some places you can actually walk across the U.S.-Mexican border. Every day I see truckloads of illegals being transported back to the Mexican side, and all we hearing from our politicians in Washington is a lot of tough talk.”

Are any of the illegals who manage to evade capture and deportation Islamic terrorists? Law enforcement officials admit that they have no clue. Some, however, worry about Islamic terrorists establishing a base in Mexico, a country with a growing Muslim community, including converts. Last May Der Spiegel, the German publication, reported that Islam is gaining a foothold in southern Mexico, long a stronghold of Catholic orthodoxy, and that “indigenous Mayans are converting by the hundreds.”

“They see themselves as restorers of Islam,” Gaspar Morquecho, an anthropologist and the author of a study of the Muslim of Chiapas, Mexico’s poorest state. ‘Their defiance of capitalism is similar in many respects to the critique of globalization espoused by many left-wingers.”

So far, the number of Muslims in Mexico (population 100 million) only numbers in the thousands, but an estimated six million Muslims live in Uncle Sam’s backyard, Latin America, including one million in Brazil and 300,00 in Argentina. U.S officials have said that both al-Qaida and the Palestinian Hezbollah, which the U.S. government has designed a terrorist organization, are active in the Tri Border Area (TBA) of Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil, where 30,000 Muslims live in what regional governments consider a hotbed of Muslim radicalism. According to Mark F. Wong, the U.S. State Department's acting coordinator for counter terrorism, who has testified before the U.S. House International Relations Committee, Hezbollah has a "broader penetration in the Western Hemisphere than any other terrorist organization."

Has anything being done about this ominous threat, given that it could lead to the unthinkable--- nuclear or chemical weapons being smuggled into the U.S.? Sources say that the level of cooperation between Mexican intelligence services and the U.S. is much better than has been reported in the press. “Both Colombia and Mexico realize there could be serious repercussions if terrorists perpetrated an attack on the U.S. as a result of getting across the border,’ said Armand B. Peschard-Sverdrup, Director of the Mexico Project at Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC. “Consequently, we have seen very strong collaboration on security issues.”

Dudley Althaus, Mexico City Bureau Chief, the Houston Chronicle, who has covered Mexico for 18 years, agreed. “The Mexican intelligence services are pretty damn good,” Althaus explained. “They are good at staying on top of their internal security issues.”

But given the rampant corruption in Mexico, the long untamed border, the determination and resourcefulness of the terrorists, the poverty in Mexico and the indecision and lack of leadership on the border security issue among the politicians in Washington, DC , the U.S. citizenry will need more than the Mexican intelligence services to keep them safe. They will need a hope and prayer.

In the wake of the U.S.’s aggressive response to 9-11, the Argentine intelligence service concluded that because the U.S. and its allies have had some success in the War on Terrorism, terrorists from Afghanistan, Central Asia and the Middle East are now looking towards the Western Hemisphere as a base of operation. It is easy getting into the TBA and from there terrorists will have no problem moving about the region and conducting mayhem. According to Argentine intelligence service, terrorist organizations such as al-Qaida and Hezbollah are joining forces with local drug lords to develop a smuggling trail all the way to Mexico. Their ultimate objective—to sneak across the border and get at Uncle Sam.

A South Carolina based journalist Ron Chepesiuk is a Fulbright Scholar and the author of Drug Lords; the Rise and Fall of the Cali Cartel.

[size=3]The Source[/source]

[Snowden]

It's like the army of fire ants that would never get here, isn't it? And somehow just as hard for anyone to see. Islam on the move? Not a pretty sight and not a happy thought.

[Woodmonkey]

For some reason, some people don't see the need to secure our borders. This should have been started right after 9-11 and given the same priority as going into Iraq, IMO.