Two Pakistani men with ties to terrorism were apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border in September, according to a new report, but it marked just the latest indication that jihadists are using the porous southern border to infiltrate the U.S.
Pakistan is considered one of many “special interest countries” by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, meaning it has a high concentration of either violent criminals or terrorists who could seek to enter the U.S. illegally.
Muhammad Azeem and Mukhtar Ahmad were two such men. The two Pakistanis were caught Sept. 20 by agents south of San Diego and just over the international border from Tijuana, the Washington Times reports.
Agents checked their identities through databases and found they were both extremely bad guys.
Ahmad was an associate of a known or suspected terrorist, while Azeem’s information had been shared by a foreign government for intelligence purposes, according to the Times.
Both men had been processed two months earlier by immigration officials in Panama, suggesting they took advantage of smuggling networks or other routes increasingly used by Central American illegal immigrants to sneak into the U.S., the Times reported.
It comes as lawmakers on Capitol Hill are increasingly worried about potential terrorists gaining entry to the U.S. through the border with Mexico or taking advantage of lax screening elsewhere in the immigration system – such as the refugee resettlement program.
The U.S. brings in 85,000 foreign refugees per year, approximately half of them coming from countries with active jihadist movements. Another 10,000 foreign nationals are granted asylum every year from Muslim-dominated countries. That’s about 45,000 potentially dangerous immigrants just between those two programs alone. That doesn’t include the roughly 170,000 who enter the U.S. from Muslim countries every year on green cards or the thousands more who come as college students and are only lightly screened.
The wisdom of importing 10,000 Syrian refugees over the next year (and many more in 2017) has been hotly debated in Congress with almost no mention of the more than 1 million Muslim refugees who have already arrived over the past 25 years from Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Burma, Uzbekistan, Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo and other terror hotbeds.
The FBI already has more than 900 active investigations into ISIS sympathizers in all 50 states. It is stretched to the limit of its abilities to foil all of the potential terror attacks, yet more high-risk refugees and immigrants enter the U.S. every day. More than 500 come every month from Somalia alone, despite the fact that Somali refugees have displayed difficulties assimilating into U.S. culture and dozens have been arrested, tried and convicted of providing material support to overseas terrorist organizations.
Nor has there been any uproar over the 100,000 Syrians who have arrived in the U.S. on green cards or student visas since the outbreak of the Syrian civil war. These Syrians would have been subjected to far less vetting than any of the refugees who are arriving now.
But most of the focus among immigration hawks in Congress remains on border patrol.
“The southern land border remains vulnerable to intrusion and exists as a point of extreme vulnerability,” Rep. Duncan Hunter, California Republican, wrote in a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson last week demanding to know how many people in the FBI’s terrorist screening database have been caught at the border.
“Evidently there are criminal organizations and individuals with the networks and know-how to facilitate illegal entry into the United States without regard for one’s intentions or status on a terrorist watchlist,” Mr. Hunter wrote. “The detention of the two Pakistani nationals underscores the fact that any serious effort to secure our homeland must include effective border security and immigration enforcement.”
The FBI, whose agents were brought in to interview the two men, declined to comment to the Times about the case, saying it had “no information to provide.”
The Border Patrol turned the men over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which said they have been in custody since September and are being held while they face immigration court proceedings.
But this is by no means an anomaly.
WND reported in May that DHS had transported an entire busload of Somali nationals to a detention center in Victorville, California, after they showed up at the border seeking asylum. They were likely never deported, immigration lawyers told WND.
Yet, when 27 Chaldean Christians from Iraq showed up at the border seeking asylum, most were deported and those not deported face criminal charges, WND reported.
A year ago, the Border Patrol apprehended four Kurdish men who said they were part of the Revolutionary People’s Liberation Front Party, which is listed by the U.S. State Department as a terrorist organization. Jeh Johnson, the Homeland Security secretary, said the four were actually members of the Kurdish Workers’ Party, which is also listed as a terrorist organization by the U.S. government, the Washington Times reported.
PropagandaGuard 