Thread: Smuggling network guided illegals from Middle East terror hotbeds to U.S. border

Smuggling network guided illegals from Middle East terror hotbeds to U.S. border



A U.S. Border Patrol agent drives near the U.S.-Mexico border fence in Santa Teresa, N.M. (Associated Press)

By Stephen Dinan -
The Washington Times
- Updated: 7:28 p.m. on Thursday, June 2, 2016

A smuggling network has managed to sneak illegal immigrants from Middle East terrorism hotbeds straight to the doorstep of the U.S., including helping one Afghan man authorities say was part of an attack plot in North America.

Immigration officials have identified at least a dozen Middle Eastern men smuggled into the Western Hemisphere by a Brazilian-based network that connected them with Mexicans who guided them up to the U.S. border, according to internal government documents reviewed by The Washington Times.

Those smuggled included Palestinians, Pakistanis and the Afghan man who Homeland Security officials said had family ties to the Taliban and was “involved in a plot to conduct an attack in the U.S. and/or Canada.” He is in custody but the Times is withholding his name at the request of law enforcement to protect ongoing investigations.

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Some of the men handled by the smuggling network were nabbed before they got to the U.S., but others actually made it into the country, including the Afghan man who was part of a group of six from so-called “special interest countries.”
The group, guided by two Mexicans employed by the smuggling network, crawled under the border fence in Arizona late last year and made it about 15 miles north before being detected by border surveillance, according to the documents, which were obtained by Rep. Duncan Hunter, California Republican.

Law enforcement asked The Times to withhold the name of the smuggling network.

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It’s unclear whether the network succeeded in sneaking other “special interest” illegal immigrants by border officials, but the documents obtained by Mr. Hunter confirm fears of a pipeline that can get would-be illegal immigrants from terrorist hotbeds to the threshold of the U.S.

Just as troubling, the Border Patrol didn’t immediately spot the Afghan man’s terrorist ties because the database agents first checked didn’t list him. It wasn’t until they also checked an FBI database that they learned he may be a danger, the documents say.

“It’s disturbing, in so many ways,” said Joe Kasper, Mr. Hunter’s chief of staff. “The interdiction of this group validates once again that the southern border is wide open to more than people looking to enter the U.S. illegally strictly for purposes of looking for work, as the administration wants us to believe. What’s worse, federal databases weren’t even synched and Border Patrol had no idea who they were arresting and the group was not considered a problem because none of them were considered a priority under the president’s enforcement protocol. That’s a major problem on its own, and it calls for DHS to figure out the problem — and fast.”

Mr. Hunter wrote a letter to to Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson this week demanding answers about the breakdowns in the process.

Both U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which is the chief agency charged with sniffing out smuggling networks, and Customs and Border Protection, which oversees the Border Patrol and which initially failed to sniff out the terrorist connections, declined to comment. Homeland Security, which oversees both agencies, didn’t provide an answer either.

The group of six men nabbed after they already got into the U.S. — the Afghan and five men identified as Pakistanis — all made asylum claims when they were eventually caught by the Border Patrol. Mr. Hunter said his understanding is that the five men from Pakistan were released based on those claims, and have disappeared.

The government documents reviewed by The Times didn’t say how much the smugglers charged, but did detail some of their operation.

Would-be illegal immigrants were first identified by a contact in the Middle East, who reported them to the smuggling network in Brazil. That network then arranged their travel up South America and through Central America, where some of them were nabbed by U.S. allies.

In the case of the Afghan man with terrorist ties, he was smuggled from Brazil through Peru, then Ecuador, Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala and finally Mexico.

He was caught near a ranch 15 miles into the U.S., after his group’s movements were detected by one of the Border Patrol’s mobile detection trucks. He told agents his group had crawled under the border fence near Nogales.

In the documents obtained by Mr. Hunter, Homeland Security officials said they considered the case a victory because it showed how they can use apprehensions on the southwest border to trace smuggling networks back to their source.

But the documents had worrying signs as well. When agents first ran the man through the Terrorist Screening Data Base, he didn’t show up as a danger. Indeed, a November report from KNXV-TV in Arizona said authorities said “records checks revealed no derogatory information about the individuals.”

That turns out not to be true, according to the documents. The Afghan man was listed in the FBI’s Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (TIDE) database as having suspect relations.

Mr. Hunter told Mr. Johnson the discrepancy between the databases was troubling.

The government documents also said some of the special interest aliens caught at the border were previously identified by authorities in other Latin American countries — but had different sets of biometric identifiers associated with them. That raised questions of whether those countries are sharing accurate information with the U.S.

Networks capable of smuggling potential terrorists has long been a concern, but the Obama administration had tamped down those worries, arguing that the southwest border wasn’t a likely route for operatives.

Still, evidence has mounted over the last couple of years, including a smuggling ring that snuck four Turkish men with ties to a U.S.-designated terrorist group into the U.S. in 2014. they paid $8,000 apiece to be smuggled from Istanbul through Paris to Mexico City, where they were stashed in safe houses before being smuggled to the border.

At the time, Mr. Johnson said the men were actually part of a group that was fighting against the Islamic State, and questioned whether they should have even been designated as part of a terrorist group.

But behind the scenes Mr. Johnson’s agents were already at work trying to roll up smuggling rings under an action dubbed Operation Citadel.

Lev Kubiak, assistant director at ICE Homeland Security Investigations’ international operations branch, testified to Congress earlier this year that Operation Citadel resulted in 210 criminal arrests in 2015. One part of the effort, known as Operation Lucero, dismantled 14 human smuggling routes, including some operations designed to move people from the Eastern Hemisphere to Latin America and then into the U.S., he said.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/...from-m/?page=2

Not good....no no no.

O is destroying this nation with his incompetence, his appointees' incompetence, his overall desire for hispanic/muslim dominance in America and citizens be damned as they pay for all social services to millions of illegals and so called "refugees".

Many of his deceptive and unlawful actions are being exposed and challenged and he seems to be unraveling, stuttering - good! He is not right in the head anyway. Too bad we have a majority of weak sister senate & congress enablers & the few forthright members have not been effective enough in stopping his decrees.

'MONUMENTAL' BORDER FAILURE Docs: Afghan with terror in mind was smuggled into US under Mexico fence

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Afghan national tied to Taliban, attack plot smuggled into US

By Judson Berger
Published June 03, 2016 FoxNews.com

An Afghan national with ties to the Taliban — and a plot to carry out a terror attack somewhere in North America — was caught last fall after being smuggled into the U.S. from Mexico, an incident sure to further inflame the debate over national security risks at the border.

The Afghan national’s alleged terror ties were not initially flagged in a terror database – and as a result, not initially reported – when the incident first came to light last November, according to Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., who obtained Homeland Security documents on the incident. It was only later that U.S. officials discovered his associations.

Hunter told Fox News on Friday that the database disconnect represents a “monumental failure.”

“We don’t know who’s coming into the U.S. and what they’re bringing with them,” he told Fox News’ “America’s Newsroom.” “It is as bad as it seems.”

The new details were first reported by The Washington Times.

According to information shared with FoxNews.com by Hunter’s office, the Afghan in question was picked up and detained by U.S. Border Patrol agents about 15 miles inside Arizona from the border. He was arrested along with five Pakistani citizens and two Mexicans identified as smugglers.

The Afghan claimed he crossed into the U.S. on Nov. 13, 2015 by crawling under a border fence near Nogales, Ariz. But an initial check in one of the terror databases apparently did not flag him.

As a result, all six illegal immigrants – from what are known as “special interest” countries – were cleared by the National Targeting Center.

According to a letter sent Wednesday from Hunter to Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, all six were initially served with an “Expedited Removal.”

The Afghan national “sought U.S. immigration benefits, and was processed as having credible fear after he stated his life was in danger,” Hunter wrote.

However, according to the letter, the individual was in fact identified in a separate database, the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (TIDE), as having terror ties.

Hunter wrote that the individual was said to be “involved in a plot to conduct an attack in the U.S. and/or Canada and has family ties to members of the Taliban.”

For an unknown reason, the individual was not initially watch-listed in the separate Terrorist Screening Database, according to the letter – and so these associations were not initially noticed.

Officials apparently noticed the error in time, as the individual remains in U.S. custody in Arizona.

But Hunter said in his letter to Johnson that his understanding is the whereabouts of the other men arrested that day “is unknown.” Hunter asked DHS for additional details.

Hunter also pushed back Friday on the notion that the incident could represent a success since the Afghan national was ultimately apprehended and later flagged.

“You can assume that others have gotten through,” Hunter told Fox News.

The information shared with FoxNews.com showed at least a dozen illegal immigrants from Afghanistan and Pakistan have either made it across the U.S. border or gotten close, dating back to 2014.

The Washington Times reported that the incident last fall involved a Brazilian-based smuggling network.

The Afghan national in question apparently took a complicated route, essentially around the world and then through Latin America, to arrive in Arizona. He told officials he left Afghanistan in 2015 and then traveled from Dubai to Brazil. From there, he moved up through Peru and other South American countries before traveling through Central America.

In August 2015, he was apprehended in Panama but was released when “no derogatory information” on him was found. He continued his journey, crossing into the U.S. in November before being detected, along with his group, by Border Patrol.

The apprehensions were reported at the time.

However, the local reports, based on comments from border officials, also said no “derogatory information” turned up when their names were run through security databases.

“The American people would have had no clue on this if we didn’t get these documents from Homeland Security,” Hunter said Friday.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016...l?intcmp=hpbt1