July 7, 2008, 9:48PM
East African smugglers seen as terror threat
E-mail offers a peek at networks that sneak more people into U.S.


By EILEEN SULLIVAN
Associated Press



Djibouti, Eritrea, Somalia and Sudan are among "special interest" countries identified by the U.S. government as sponsors or supporters of terrorism.
Since 2003, the number of East Africans caught trying to enter the U.S. illegally has gone up — from 22 in 2003 to 125 in 2007. So far in 2008, 159 have been caught — 138 of them from Eritrea.
WASHINGTON — The intercepted e-mail was alarmingly matter-of-fact for anyone worried about a new terror attack: "getting into U.S. is no problem at all. thats what i do best."

The Ghanaian man who wrote it is in prison, accused of smuggling East Africans into the U.S. via Latin America for economic reasons. But the government worries such operations could be used by terrorists now that passports and other travel documents have become harder to acquire and more difficult to fake.

Intelligence officials are focusing new attention on these networks that smuggle people from Djibouti, Eritrea, Somalia and Sudan — known havens for terrorists, including al-Qaida — according to an internal government assessment obtained by The Associated Press.

In the 12 months that ended last Sept. 30, U.S. officials caught 372 East Africans trying to get into the country, the assessment said. This is the most from these countries since the Homeland Security Department was formed in 2003.

"Any time we shut down a smuggling organization, there's always somebody there to step in the place," said Scott Hatfield, unit chief of the Human Smuggling division at Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Mohammed Kamel Ibrahim, 26, a Ghanaian living in Mexico, wrote in an e-mail to an associate on Oct. 24, 2006, that smuggling somebody into the United States would be no problem.

Ibrahim and his partner, Sampson Lovelace Boateng, a 53-year-old Ghana citizen living in Belize, were arrested last year in Mexico City and at the Miami airport, respectively. Their organization accounted for most of the pipeline from East Africa to the U.S., officials say.

Terrorists will continue to use whatever means necessary to get into the U.S. — including smuggling networks, said Janice Kephart, a former counsel on the Sept. 11 Commission.

The East African countries that Homeland Security is watching all have weak enforcement in place for travel documents, Kephart said, and have connections to organizations with anti-American causes.

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