Border rancher: 'We’ve found prayer rugs out here. It’s unreal'
by Anna Giaritelli
| January 16, 2019 07:32 AM
LORDSBURG, N.M. — Ranchers and farmers near the U.S.-Mexico border have been finding prayer rugs on their properties in recent months, according to one rancher who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation by cartels.
The mats are pieces of carpet that those of the Muslim faith kneel on as they worship during their unauthorized trek into and through the United States.
"There’s a lot of people coming in not just from Mexico," the rancher said. "People, the general public, just don’t get the terrorist threats of that. That’s what’s really scary. You don’t know what’s coming across. We’ve found prayer rugs out here. It’s unreal. It’s not just Mexican nationals that are coming across."
The rancher, who lives with her family in a remote, southwestern part of the state, said the discoveries raise questions about how many people who illegally entered the U.S. in Hidalgo County, N.M., traveled tens of thousands of miles from overseas to sneak across the southern border.
She is one of just a few hundred residents of Animas, N.M., a tiny town that sits between the international border and the Border Patrol's Lordsburg Station, which is 95 miles north of the boundary.
The few hundred residents have no local police department. They rely on the Hidalgo County Sheriff's Department and U.S. Border Patrol to help when they need it, but otherwise count on tips and support from one another because of the 40 miles that separate the community from the county headquarters in Lordsburg.
The rancher and six other local residents in Animus told Washington Examiner this week that migrants from places other than Mexico and Central America are arriving.
"i've talked to several agents that I trust. There’s not a lot that I do trust, but the ones I do trust, I talk to them," she said during a tour of her property. "What Border Patrol classifies as OTMs [other than Mexicans] has really increased in the last couple years, but drastically within the last six months. Chinese, Germans, Russians, a lot of Middle Easterners. Those Czechoslovakians they caught over on our neighbor’s just last summer."
Billy Darnell, a cattle rancher in Animus, said his neighbor had 18 women and children from the Philippines show up on his property last year. Border Patrol was called to the scene and took the group in.
Government data indicates six known or suspected terrorists were caught trying to enter the U.S. from Mexico from Oct. 1, 2017, through March 31, 2018. However, the Trump administration has stated on several occasions that 3,700 people who were identified as coming from countries with terrorism problems have also been apprehended at that border.
"We’ve talked about the thousands — the thousands of terror watch list individuals who traveled through our hemisphere last year," Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said on Fox News this month. "To pretend there’s not a danger on an unsecured border, on an open border, is just ridiculous. It belies common sense."
Border Patrol and its parent agency, Customs and Border Protection, did not respond to multiple interview requests in the past week.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/n...ere-its-unreal
Rancher Alleges ‘Prayer Rugs’ Found Near Border, Without Any Evidence
Without pictures of rugs or some kind of proof we have to wonder whether this is true. However terrorists surely have crossed our porous border.
~~~
January 16, 2019
Stephen Silver
As the government shutdown continues, with funding for the president’s proposed border wall the main point of contention, many news outlets have been going to the border to interview those close to where the wall would be built.
One such report Wednesday, by the Washington Examiner, alleged something shocking: that ranchers and farmers along the border have been finding Islamic prayer rugs in the area. This indicates that Muslims — and, by implication, Muslim terrorists — have been crossing the border illegally. This echoes rhetoric from the president, per the New York Times, that terrorists are entering the country by crossing the border, and therefore a wall is needed to stop them.
The story features a female rancher from New Mexico, interviewed in a 97-second video, talking about how many of the people crossing the border in recent months have been from countries other than Mexico.
“People, the general public, just don’t get the terrorist threats of that,” the rancher says. “That’s what’s really scary. You don’t know what’s coming across. We’ve found prayer rugs out here. It’s unreal. It’s not just Mexican nationals that are coming across.” The woman is interviewed with the camera pointed at her knees, and the story claims that the rancher requested anonymity, “for fear of retaliation by cartels.”
She also claims that nationalities of illegal border crossers apprehended have included “Chinese, Germans, Russians, a lot of Middle Easterners [and] those Czechoslovakians they caught over on our neighbor’s just last summer.” Czechoslovakia split into separate countries in 1990.
There’s one other big hole in the Examiner‘s story, however: there’s no evidence of these “prayer rugs.” There are no pictures or video of them, nor any corroboration of any kind that such rugs have ever been found. The reporter, it appears, was not shown the rugs themselves or pictures of them. This was pointed out by Twitter persona UrbanAchievr:
Brandt
@UrbanAchievr
editor: "so this rancher is also an expert on muslim prayer rugs?"
journalist: "yup"
"but we can't run his name because the cartels will kill him?"
"exactly"
"does he have pictures or anything?"
"nope"
"make it the lede"
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DxDDlYbWsAAblNw.jpg
9:05 AM - 16 Jan 2019 from Manhattan, NY
It is true that many of those crossing the border are from Central American countries south of Mexico, as this has been widely reported during the last several years of debate over immigration policy. The caravan that made so much news in the later part of 2018, of course, originated in Honduras.
But the “prayer rugs” claim, it appears, is wholly unsubstantiated by anything other than one person’s word. It’s also not clear why something as important to a practicing Muslim as a prayer rug would be carelessly left on the ground in any large number. Such rugs, per The National, are often imported and expensive.
The Examiner piece notes that a total of six “known or suspected terrorists” were caught at the border in the six months between October 2017 and March 2018, a significantly smaller number than the 3,700 bandied about by the Trump administration as “people who were identified as coming from countries with terrorism problems.”
David Dewhurst, the former lieutenant governor of Texas, claimed on multiple occasions in 2014 that prayer rugs had been found near the border in Texas, but the claim was rated “Pants on Fire” by Politifact.
https://www.inquisitr.com/5252600/ra...-any-evidence/
