Links Between Terrorism, Drug Trade, and Illegal Immigration Can't Be Ignored
By Michael Cutler

http://counterterrorismblog.org/2007/01 ... drug_t.php


Here is an article that was written several days ago by Sara Carter, this year's recipient of the Eugene Katz Award presented by the Center for Immigration Studies, the think tank with which I have been affiliated for the past several years. Sara is an excellent journalist and her article, that I have attached below is important for you to read. It makes it clear that our nation's failure to secure its borders and create an immigration system that possesses true integrity imperils nothing less than the security of our nation and the survival of our citizens. Sara saw fit to include a brief quote that I provided to her and indeed, what I said in that quote sums up the situation quite succinctly: "The bureaucrats don't understand what a dangerous game they are playing with American lives if they don't do something to fix the situation at the border."

There is another statement made in the article that is especially disturbing. Not surprisingly, this statement bears no attribution. Any government employee who would be willing to be quoted for having said it had better have a new job lined up: "Those interviewed by the Daily Bulletin say agencies including the FBI and CIA are not using information from Border Patrol and Drug Enforcement Administration agents to make connections between the drug trade, illegal immigration and terrorist organizations."

How anyone in either law enforcement or intelligence could not accept the simple fact that open borders facilitate the movement of criminals, drugs and terrorists into our country defies belief! Note these sentences from the article: "Evidence of 'special-interest aliens' using the Mexican border to gain entry to the United States has been kept secret from the American public, according to federal law enforcement agents, terrorism experts and critics of U.S. foreign policy with Mexico... According to DEA intelligence reports, the link between terrorism and narcotics has been well known since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks in New York, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania. But federal agents say getting bureaucrats to understand the growing danger is difficult when most lawmakers won't even acknowledge many of the problems already happening along the U.S. border... A DEA official said terrorist incidents such as the Madrid train bombings in March 2004 would be easy to duplicate in the United States, with the Southwest border as the best place to smuggle in those who would carry out such a plot."

Yet, the President, members of his administration as well as a number of members of Congress (both sides of the aisle as well as in both the Senate as well as the House of Representatives) constantly spew utter foolishness about the need for a guest worker program that would provide official identity documents and legal status to millions of illegal aliens whose true identities are unknown and ultimately unknowable to our government. The debate rages about the need to build a fence along the border that separates the United States from Mexico and, in fact, I have been interviewed on a number of television programs about the need to construct the fence while so many other aspects of the immigration system are in utter disarray.

The fact is that according to the article, an illegal alien who claimed to be a citizen of Mexico persisted in this false claim for nearly a week until, for reasons not explained in the article, finally admitted that he had provided a false name and was even lying about his nationality. He was not a citizen of Mexico but rather a citizen of Egypt, a so-called "Special Interest" country, meaning that Egypt is of concern where national security because it is linked to terrorism. If Alfonso Salinas, citizen of Mexico could be ultimately determined to be Ayman Sulmane Kamal, a citizen of Egypt, my question is, how many other illegal aliens have actually entered our country by claiming to be citizens of Mexico or some other Latin American country while they are, in fact, aliens from a Middle Eastern country that is of "Special Interest?" How easy do you suppose it would be to determine that an illegal alien who is captured in the United States who has a dark, swarthy complexion, provides an Hispanic name, speaks Spanish and claims to be a citizen of Mexico is not really from Mexico or even Latin America but is, in fact, from the Middle East? How do you know who anyone is if you have no reliable means of identifying them?

This is not an unreasonable question or an unreasonable concern. When we first meet people who are unfamiliar to us, the usual first question we ask is "What is your name?" Our identities define who we are. The concept of having a "good name" means that the possessor of such a good name has established for himself a good reputation. I believe that all of us understand the importance on properly identifying people who we meet and especially when we intend to enter into a business or personal relationship with people we encounter. Criminals have traditionally sought to conceal their true identities and nefarious goals by using false names.

I would, at this point, like to relate a story to you that is based on an investigation in which I assisted the DEA, Houston Police and other agencies more than ten years ago. I was assigned to the Organized Crime, Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF) in New York City as an INS senior special agent. I received a phone call from an INS OCDETF unit in Houston, Texas. Apparently while a number of law enforcement officers working on a narcotics investigation they conducted a surveillance as a so-called "stash house." Such a location is identified as a building used by drug smugglers or traffickers to conceal narcotics, cash and other contraband. As they continued their surveillance a man who had a swarthy complexion showed up and departed the stash house with a package. The Houston cops who were working on the investigation stopped the car for a motor vehicle violation and as they approached the car they spotted a sawed-off shotgun on the floor of the van the suspect was driving. They immediately arrested him for the weapon and they also noticed that there were many thousands of dollars in cash in the vehicle. The package turned out to contain a significant quantity of narcotics. The INS special agent on the scene attempted to question the suspect in Spanish because he appeared to not be able to speak English. The stash house was located in a community that had many illegal aliens from Mexico and so the presumption was made that the individual that they had in custody was probably a citizen of Mexico. Furthermore, his clothing was of Mexican manufacture. Spanish language training had been part of the curriculum for all INS special agents before the creation of DHS, the agency I now refer to as the Department of Homeland Surrender. The suspect seemed unable to comprehend the INS agent when he spoke in Spanish. Eventually the vehicle was thoroughly searched and to the amazement of the law enforcement personnel, they found a mutilated passport hidden in the upholstery of the van, issued by the government of Israel! I was contacted because the INS senior special agent assigned to the investigation was someone I had met previously and he recalled that I had established a long-standing professional relationship with the Israeli National Police dating back to 1976 when I had stumbled across a terrorist plot to destroy an Israeli oil refinery. Ultimately the Israeli government furnished me with a complete dossier of the suspect which helped to identify other members of the drug organization that he was associated with. He had been apparently moving large quantities of narcotics across the Mexican border. The cooperation of the Israeli National Police was invaluable to our investigation. This case also shows how difficult it can be to properly identify the true identities and the true nationalities of criminals. It is also amazing that while the special agents of the INS were required to successfully complete a Spanish language training program as part of the training curriculum that such Spanish language training is not even being offered for the new special agents of ICE. In fact, no foreign language is being offered, let alone required, even though it is common knowledge that most aliens do not speak English. How in blazes can our law enforcement officers who are sworn to enforce the immigration laws able to do their job if they cannot, most likely, speak with the people they are charged with investigating?

Our wide-open borders may be wonderful for trade and profit, but terrible for national security and the safety of our citizens. No sane person would put greed ahead of the safety of his family but apparently our politicians and many of the bureaucrats who lead critical agencies that the politicians appoint to key positions are willing to do precisely that. That Sylvestre Reyes refuses to accept the reality of the incursions on our border, especially with his background as a member of the Border Patrol, is more than a little disturbing. However, it is perhaps not more disturbing than the fact that he was unable to identify Hezbollah or know whether there is a difference between Sunie and Shia factions of Islam or to therefore identify which of these factions is aligned with Al-Qaeda. This is not personal it is a matter, is involves nothing less than the survival of our nation and we need our leaders to wake up to reality! Mr. Reyes needs to take a crash course on terrorism (pardon the pun). He needs to develop an awareness of the perils our nation faces if his Committee is to provide the critical oversight that it is charged with.

Many years ago a book entitled, "The Peter Principle" was published. It postulated that in the corporate world, executives rose beyond their ability to do an effective job. The book said that many executives ultimately rose to their levels of incompetence and that because of it, many corporations found themselves in deep trouble. We have seen similar problems in the realm of government as well, whether we are discussing politicians or bureaucrats in key positions. It is certainly not a good situation when a major corporation suffers losses or especially when such a corporation goes bankrupt. However, the employees of those companies can always new jobs in different companies. If our country goes out of business, then what? If their is a massive terrorist attack, what will that mean to those Americans who survive?

I suspect that there are other illegal aliens who have entered our country from the Middle East who have succeeded in passing themselves off as being from Latin America. If our nation ultimately creates a guest worker amnesty program, these illegal aliens who have embedded themselves in our country will be happy to register for the guest worker amnesty program under an assumed identity and them create a new "clean" identity for themselves in order to better be able to hide in plain sight as they await instructions to carry out an attack against our nation.

Elected politicians and bureaucrats at various government agencies all hold a public trust. They need to live up to that trust every day that they go to work. Sara's article provides insight to a deadly serious situation on our nation's borders that too many politicians and high-ranking bureaucrats are refusing to accept. The politicians who refuse to secure our borders and refuse to create an immigration system that possesses integrity are gambling with the lives of the citizens of the United States and the future of our nation. They are required to take an oath of office that reflects the seriousness of their responsibilities. It is time that they put national security and the safety of our citizens ahead of political objectives. "We the People" need to help them to understand this. I request that each of you makes it your New Years resolution to become acquainted with your various elected representatives. You need to remind them who they work for and what is expected of them. The more you reach out and contact them, the more they will hear the message (many of them seem to suffer from a hearing deficit). The security of our borders is not a Democratic or Republican issue, it is an American issue!

January 3, 2007 09:45 AM Print