Unholy Border Alliance
Sun Mar 13, 2005 11:43
64.140.159.63
Unholy Border Alliance
By Erick Stakelbeck
FrontPageMagazine.com | January 3, 2005
http://www.apfn.org/apfn/ms-13.htm
The new intelligence reform bill signed into law by President Bush on December 17 may ultimately end up being remembered more for the provisions it didn't contain rather than those it did.
After much heated debate, House and Senate negotiators ultimately threw out proposed provisions to the bill that would have tightened immigration laws. Although House Speaker Dennis Hastert has promised to bring drivers' license standards, asylum procedures and other border security provisions back to the House floor by early 2005, in the meantime, the very real danger that Islamist terrorists will infiltrate America's porous southern border persists.
Roughly 60,000 illegal immigrants designated as 'other-than-Mexican,' or OTMs, were detained last year along the U.S.-Mexico border, including a sizable number from Arab and Muslim countries. And if recent reports are any indication, they may be getting some troubling new help in their efforts to enter the United States.
In a December 4 incident that received scant media attention, a Bangladeshi Muslim man named Fakhrul Islam was among a group of 13 illegal aliens arrested near Brownsville, Texas, just across the border from Mexico. Border Patrol agents have said that one of the men detained along with Islam was a member of Mara Salvatrucha, a violent Salvadoran criminal gang with more than 300,000 members across Central and North America, including powerful enterprises in several major U.S. cities.
Mara Salvatrucha, also commonly known as 'MS-13' due to its members' proclivity for sporting tattoos of the number 13, is involved in a smorgasbord of illegal activity, including the smuggling of drugs, weapons and people across the Mexican border. The gang controls many of the smuggling routes from Mexico into the U.S., a fact that has not escaped Al-Qaeda operatives eager to carry out attacks on American soil.
In July, Adnan El-Shukrijumah, a high-ranking Al-Qaeda leader and one of the most wanted terrorists in the world, was spotted in Honduras meeting with members of MS-13. Attorney General John Ashcroft has said that El-Shukrijumah, who he has described as a 'clear and present danger to America,' is seeking ways to infiltrate the U.S. via the Mexican border, and is willing to pay top dollar in order to do so.
El-Shukrijumah, reportedly last seen in August in northern Mexico knows that the potential killing of innocent American civilians would certainly not deter MS-13 from working with Al-Qaeda: the gang is thought to be responsible for thousands of murders and maimings throughout the Western Hemisphere; and, like Islamist terrorists, decapitations and home-made bombs are part of its grisly arsenal.
With a ruthless, money-driven cabal like MS-13 controlling much of the illegal traffic between the U.S. and Mexico, there's no telling how many Islamist terrorists have already taken advantage. That someone of Middle Eastern descent could blend in with a large group of Mexicans with similarly dark complexions -- thereby escaping closer scrutiny from border patrols -- is all too feasible.
Then again, an October intelligence report supplied to the Department of Homeland Security by Russian security services said that a group of 25 backpack-carrying Chechen terrorists -- all white -- illegally entered Arizona by way of Mexico last summer. Furthermore, in September, Farida Ahmed, a South African Muslim woman, pleaded guilty in a Texas court to illegal entry, lying to a federal agent and using an altered passport. Ahmed had been detained by Border Patrol officers in July as she tried to board a plane for New York out of Texas.
At the time of her arrest, Ahmed was carrying $7,300 in various currencies as well as a fake South African passport that was missing pages. She admitted to entering the U.S. illegally by wading across the Rio Grande, and her travel itinerary showed that on her way to America, she had stopped in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, just as several of the 9/11 hijackers had done.
It was announced last week that Ahmed is due to be deported. But many non-Mexican illegal aliens like Ahmed are invariably released by immigration officials who simply don't have the detention space to hold them. Worse, up to 85 percent of them skip their scheduled immigration hearings, only to disappear into American society.
While entry into the U.S. is their primary goal in establishing a base in Latin America, Islamist terrorists -- well-aware of the allure Marxism once held for many south of the border -- also see the region as a potential breeding ground for Islamic converts due to its poor economic and social conditions and corrupt governments.
For instance, the Shia terrorist group Hezbollah wields a strong presence in the tri-border region, a lawless, crime-ridden area where Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay intersect. Both Osama bin Laden and 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed are also said to have spent time there, during the 1990's.
It was Mohammed who in 2002 encouraged alleged dirty bomber Jose Padilla to 'enter the United States by way of Mexico' in order to carry out attacks on U.S. targets, according to Deputy Attorney General James Comey.
Ironically, before converting to Islam and volunteering his services to Al-Qaeda, Padilla belonged to the Chicago chapter of the Latin Kings -- like MS-13, a violent Hispanic criminal gang.
Although U.S. agents were able to collar Padilla before he could carry out a terrorist attack, the U.S. border strategy, as presently construed, may one day soon yield a much less savory result. Come January, lawmakers should take notice.
Erick Stakelbeck is senior writer at the Investigative Project, a Washington, D.C.-based counter-terrorism research institute. http://www.frontpagemagazine.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=16509
==============================================
Tuesday, January 4, 2005
COMMENTARY: Homeland insecurity: The year in review
2004 was a good year for terrorists, violent gang members, law-breakers and fraud artists seeking safe haven in America. Let's reminisce:
The rise of MS-13. The savage El Salvador-based gang, Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13), has now penetrated more than a dozen states. In May, a Fairfax, Va., teenager had his fingers chopped off in an MS-13 machete attack. In November, Washington, D.C.-area police received warning that MS-13 is plotting to ambush and kill them when they respond to service calls. Active in alien, drug and weapons smuggling, MS-13 members in America have been tied to numerous killings, robberies, carjackings, extortions and rapes. The gang has also been linked to efforts to help al Qaeda infiltrate the U.S.-Mexico border.
The path of least resistance. Border Patrol officers and local investigative journalists in the Southwest reported on increasing numbers of Middle Eastern males entering illegally from Mexico. Muslim prayer books and Arabic diaries were discovered on "Terrorist Alley" in southern Arizona. Suspected al Qaeda operative Adnan Shukrijumah, a fugitive Saudi pilot who reportedly met with MS-13 earlier this year, is believed to be in Mexico.
In April, a suspected al Qaeda agent arrested in Queens, N.Y., revealed a scheme to smuggle terrorists across the U.S.-Mexico border. In July, two alert Border Patrol agents apprehended Farida Goolam Mohamed Ahmed at McAllen (Texas) airport. She was carrying an altered South African passport, muddy jeans and dirty shoes. She confessed to having entered the country illegally by crossing the Rio Grande River. Court documents showed that she was on a government watch list and had entered the United States up to 250 times.
Upon news of Ahmed's arrest, intelligence experts reported that suspected terror agents are acquiring passports from South Africa and other non-suspect countries; flying to the al Qaeda-coddling "tri-border area" in South America; learning Spanish; traveling to Mexico; and doing the backstroke into America. Lawmakers in Texas warned that the feds are arresting and then releasing thousands of other suspected terrorists classified as "Other Than Mexicans" because of lack of jail space.
President Bush said "family values don't stop at the Rio Grande." I repeat: Neither do the Islamofascists.
Bungling Washington bureaucrats. In the skies, federal air marshals continue to be hampered by director Thomas Quinn's moronic "professional" dress code (no athletic socks or jeans allowed). Although he no longer oversees transportation security, underperformin' Norman Mineta remains in charge of the Department of Transportation, where he maintains an absolutist opposition to homeland defense profiling. And kowtowing to civil liberties Chicken Littles and Muslim lobbyists, the Bush administration canceled the Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System out of fear of privacy and discrimination lawsuits.
In July, the Department of Homeland Security rebuked Border Patrol agents in Southern California for conducting interior enforcement sweeps because they did not bow down to the "sensitivities" of open-borders radicals. In September, DHS Border Security Undersecretary Asa Hutchinson stated publicly that it's "not realistic" for his own officers to try to do their jobs and deport law-breakers.
Morale among rank-and-file enforcement officers has plummeted.
The botched Bernie Kerik DHS nomination and the refusal of the Bush administration to support common-sense immigration enforcement and secure identity measures in the "intelligence reform" bill (which ended up containing more non-intelligence than intelligence provisions) didn't help.
Amnesty, shamnesty. The year ended as it began, with President Bush dangling his abominable proposal to grant a mass governmental pardon to millions of illegal alien workers and their employers. First floated in January, the White House also pushed through a Social Security "totalization" program with Mexico, which will dispense billions of dollars to illegal alien workers who used counterfeit Social Security cards and stolen numbers to secure illegal jobs.
Announcement of the Bush plan led to a spike in illegal alien apprehensions at the border during the first three months of 2004 -- 25 percent higher compared with last year. Those are just the ones who got caught. T.J. Bonner, president of the National Border Patrol Council, told the Washington Times in April: "People were coming up to our agents and saying, 'Where do we sign up for that guest-worker program, or that amnesty?' Word travels like wildfire down there."
And around the world. The word is we're open. Wide open. What a way to ring in the new year.
Michelle Malkin
Is author of "Invasion: How America Still Welcomes Terrorists, Criminals, and Other Foreign Menaces to Our Shores" (Regnery). Her e-mail address is malkin@comcast.net.
http://www.desertdispatch.com/2005/110484850141414.html
============================================
Feds Probe Al Qaeda Link to Latino Gang
— admin @ 6:55 pm
Federal officials are investigating a violent Central America-based street gang for ties to Middle Eastern terrorism, an alliance that seems unlikely but poses a frightening threat to the United States.
MORE:>>
http://www.apfn.org/apfn/ms-13.htm
Al Qaeda Seeks Tie to Local Gangs: Salvadoran Group May Aid Entry to U.S.
By Jerry Seper, The Washington Times, September 28, 2004
According to this report, al Qaeda may be working with a violent Salvadoran gang to smuggle terrorists into the United States.
Al Qaeda leader Adnan G. El Shukrijumah reportedly met in July in Tegucigalpa, Honduras with leaders of the Mara Salvatrucha (also known as the MS-13, because many members identify themselves with tattoos of the number 13) criminal gang requesting help in infiltrating the U.S.-Mexico border.
Seper writes that the MS-13 has established "a major smuggling center in Matamoros, Mexico, just south of Brownsville, Texas, where it has arranged to bring illegal aliens from countries other than Mexico into the United States." The Mara Salvatrucha gang, Seper writes, is actively involved in alien, drug and weapons smuggling and their members in the United States have been tied to "numerous killings, robberies, burglaries, carjackings, extortions, rapes and aggravated assaults -- including at least seven killings in Virginia and a machete attack on a 16-year-old in Alexandria (Virginia) that severely mutilated his hands."
El Shukrijumah, who was born in Saudi Arabia but is thought to be a Yemen national, is known to carry passports from Saudi Arabia, Trinidad, Guyana and Canada. He is said to have been in Canada last year looking for nuclear material for a so-called "dirty bomb." He was named in a March 2003 material-witness arrest warrant by federal prosecutors in Northern Virginia in connection with potential terrorist threats against the United States.
El Shukrijumah is thought to have been involved in the 9/11 attacks and was among the seven suspected al Qaeda operatives identified in May by Attorney General John Ashcroft as being involved in new plans to attack the United States.
Special Investigation: America's Border
http://www.apfn.org/apfn/ms-13.htm
By Erick Stakelbeck
FrontPageMagazine.com | January 3, 2005
http://www.apfn.org/apfn/ms-13.htm
The new intelligence reform bill signed into law by President Bush on December 17 may ultimately end up being remembered more for the provisions it didn't contain rather than those it did.
After much heated debate, House and Senate negotiators ultimately threw out proposed provisions to the bill that would have tightened immigration laws. Although House Speaker Dennis Hastert has promised to bring drivers' license standards, asylum procedures and other border security provisions back to the House floor by early 2005, in the meantime, the very real danger that Islamist terrorists will infiltrate America's porous southern border persists.
Roughly 60,000 illegal immigrants designated as 'other-than-Mexican,' or OTMs, were detained last year along the U.S.-Mexico border, including a sizable number from Arab and Muslim countries. And if recent reports are any indication, they may be getting some troubling new help in their efforts to enter the United States.
In a December 4 incident that received scant media attention, a Bangladeshi Muslim man named Fakhrul Islam was among a group of 13 illegal aliens arrested near Brownsville, Texas, just across the border from Mexico. Border Patrol agents have said that one of the men detained along with Islam was a member of Mara Salvatrucha, a violent Salvadoran criminal gang with more than 300,000 members across Central and North America, including powerful enterprises in several major U.S. cities.
Mara Salvatrucha, also commonly known as 'MS-13' due to its members' proclivity for sporting tattoos of the number 13, is involved in a smorgasbord of illegal activity, including the smuggling of drugs, weapons and people across the Mexican border. The gang controls many of the smuggling routes from Mexico into the U.S., a fact that has not escaped Al-Qaeda operatives eager to carry out attacks on American soil.
In July, Adnan El-Shukrijumah, a high-ranking Al-Qaeda leader and one of the most wanted terrorists in the world, was spotted in Honduras meeting with members of MS-13. Attorney General John Ashcroft has said that El-Shukrijumah, who he has described as a 'clear and present danger to America,' is seeking ways to infiltrate the U.S. via the Mexican border, and is willing to pay top dollar in order to do so.
El-Shukrijumah, reportedly last seen in August in northern Mexico knows that the potential killing of innocent American civilians would certainly not deter MS-13 from working with Al-Qaeda: the gang is thought to be responsible for thousands of murders and maimings throughout the Western Hemisphere; and, like Islamist terrorists, decapitations and home-made bombs are part of its grisly arsenal.
With a ruthless, money-driven cabal like MS-13 controlling much of the illegal traffic between the U.S. and Mexico, there's no telling how many Islamist terrorists have already taken advantage. That someone of Middle Eastern descent could blend in with a large group of Mexicans with similarly dark complexions -- thereby escaping closer scrutiny from border patrols -- is all too feasible.
Then again, an October intelligence report supplied to the Department of Homeland Security by Russian security services said that a group of 25 backpack-carrying Chechen terrorists -- all white -- illegally entered Arizona by way of Mexico last summer. Furthermore, in September, Farida Ahmed, a South African Muslim woman, pleaded guilty in a Texas court to illegal entry, lying to a federal agent and using an altered passport. Ahmed had been detained by Border Patrol officers in July as she tried to board a plane for New York out of Texas.
At the time of her arrest, Ahmed was carrying $7,300 in various currencies as well as a fake South African passport that was missing pages. She admitted to entering the U.S. illegally by wading across the Rio Grande, and her travel itinerary showed that on her way to America, she had stopped in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, just as several of the 9/11 hijackers had done.
It was announced last week that Ahmed is due to be deported. But many non-Mexican illegal aliens like Ahmed are invariably released by immigration officials who simply don't have the detention space to hold them. Worse, up to 85 percent of them skip their scheduled immigration hearings, only to disappear into American society.
While entry into the U.S. is their primary goal in establishing a base in Latin America, Islamist terrorists -- well-aware of the allure Marxism once held for many south of the border -- also see the region as a potential breeding ground for Islamic converts due to its poor economic and social conditions and corrupt governments.
For instance, the Shia terrorist group Hezbollah wields a strong presence in the tri-border region, a lawless, crime-ridden area where Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay intersect. Both Osama bin Laden and 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed are also said to have spent time there, during the 1990's.
It was Mohammed who in 2002 encouraged alleged dirty bomber Jose Padilla to 'enter the United States by way of Mexico' in order to carry out attacks on U.S. targets, according to Deputy Attorney General James Comey.
Ironically, before converting to Islam and volunteering his services to Al-Qaeda, Padilla belonged to the Chicago chapter of the Latin Kings -- like MS-13, a violent Hispanic criminal gang.
Although U.S. agents were able to collar Padilla before he could carry out a terrorist attack, the U.S. border strategy, as presently construed, may one day soon yield a much less savory result. Come January, lawmakers should take notice.
Erick Stakelbeck is senior writer at the Investigative Project, a Washington, D.C.-based counter-terrorism research institute. http://www.frontpagemagazine.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=16509
==============================================
Tuesday, January 4, 2005
COMMENTARY: Homeland insecurity: The year in review
2004 was a good year for terrorists, violent gang members, law-breakers and fraud artists seeking safe haven in America. Let's reminisce:
The rise of MS-13. The savage El Salvador-based gang, Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13), has now penetrated more than a dozen states. In May, a Fairfax, Va., teenager had his fingers chopped off in an MS-13 machete attack. In November, Washington, D.C.-area police received warning that MS-13 is plotting to ambush and kill them when they respond to service calls. Active in alien, drug and weapons smuggling, MS-13 members in America have been tied to numerous killings, robberies, carjackings, extortions and rapes. The gang has also been linked to efforts to help al Qaeda infiltrate the U.S.-Mexico border.
The path of least resistance. Border Patrol officers and local investigative journalists in the Southwest reported on increasing numbers of Middle Eastern males entering illegally from Mexico. Muslim prayer books and Arabic diaries were discovered on "Terrorist Alley" in southern Arizona. Suspected al Qaeda operative Adnan Shukrijumah, a fugitive Saudi pilot who reportedly met with MS-13 earlier this year, is believed to be in Mexico.
In April, a suspected al Qaeda agent arrested in Queens, N.Y., revealed a scheme to smuggle terrorists across the U.S.-Mexico border. In July, two alert Border Patrol agents apprehended Farida Goolam Mohamed Ahmed at McAllen (Texas) airport. She was carrying an altered South African passport, muddy jeans and dirty shoes. She confessed to having entered the country illegally by crossing the Rio Grande River. Court documents showed that she was on a government watch list and had entered the United States up to 250 times.
Upon news of Ahmed's arrest, intelligence experts reported that suspected terror agents are acquiring passports from South Africa and other non-suspect countries; flying to the al Qaeda-coddling "tri-border area" in South America; learning Spanish; traveling to Mexico; and doing the backstroke into America. Lawmakers in Texas warned that the feds are arresting and then releasing thousands of other suspected terrorists classified as "Other Than Mexicans" because of lack of jail space.
President Bush said "family values don't stop at the Rio Grande." I repeat: Neither do the Islamofascists.
Bungling Washington bureaucrats. In the skies, federal air marshals continue to be hampered by director Thomas Quinn's moronic "professional" dress code (no athletic socks or jeans allowed). Although he no longer oversees transportation security, underperformin' Norman Mineta remains in charge of the Department of Transportation, where he maintains an absolutist opposition to homeland defense profiling. And kowtowing to civil liberties Chicken Littles and Muslim lobbyists, the Bush administration canceled the Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System out of fear of privacy and discrimination lawsuits.
In July, the Department of Homeland Security rebuked Border Patrol agents in Southern California for conducting interior enforcement sweeps because they did not bow down to the "sensitivities" of open-borders radicals. In September, DHS Border Security Undersecretary Asa Hutchinson stated publicly that it's "not realistic" for his own officers to try to do their jobs and deport law-breakers.
Morale among rank-and-file enforcement officers has plummeted.
The botched Bernie Kerik DHS nomination and the refusal of the Bush administration to support common-sense immigration enforcement and secure identity measures in the "intelligence reform" bill (which ended up containing more non-intelligence than intelligence provisions) didn't help.
Amnesty, shamnesty. The year ended as it began, with President Bush dangling his abominable proposal to grant a mass governmental pardon to millions of illegal alien workers and their employers. First floated in January, the White House also pushed through a Social Security "totalization" program with Mexico, which will dispense billions of dollars to illegal alien workers who used counterfeit Social Security cards and stolen numbers to secure illegal jobs.
Announcement of the Bush plan led to a spike in illegal alien apprehensions at the border during the first three months of 2004 -- 25 percent higher compared with last year. Those are just the ones who got caught. T.J. Bonner, president of the National Border Patrol Council, told the Washington Times in April: "People were coming up to our agents and saying, 'Where do we sign up for that guest-worker program, or that amnesty?' Word travels like wildfire down there."
And around the world. The word is we're open. Wide open. What a way to ring in the new year.
Michelle Malkin
Is author of "Invasion: How America Still Welcomes Terrorists, Criminals, and Other Foreign Menaces to Our Shores" (Regnery). Her e-mail address is malkin@comcast.net.
http://www.desertdispatch.com/2005/110484850141414.html
============================================
Feds Probe Al Qaeda Link to Latino Gang
— admin @ 6:55 pm
Federal officials are investigating a violent Central America-based street gang for ties to Middle Eastern terrorism, an alliance that seems unlikely but poses a frightening threat to the United States.
MORE:>>
http://www.apfn.org/apfn/ms-13.htm
Al Qaeda Seeks Tie to Local Gangs: Salvadoran Group May Aid Entry to U.S.
By Jerry Seper, The Washington Times, September 28, 2004
According to this report, al Qaeda may be working with a violent Salvadoran gang to smuggle terrorists into the United States.
Al Qaeda leader Adnan G. El Shukrijumah reportedly met in July in Tegucigalpa, Honduras with leaders of the Mara Salvatrucha (also known as the MS-13, because many members identify themselves with tattoos of the number 13) criminal gang requesting help in infiltrating the U.S.-Mexico border.
Seper writes that the MS-13 has established "a major smuggling center in Matamoros, Mexico, just south of Brownsville, Texas, where it has arranged to bring illegal aliens from countries other than Mexico into the United States." The Mara Salvatrucha gang, Seper writes, is actively involved in alien, drug and weapons smuggling and their members in the United States have been tied to "numerous killings, robberies, burglaries, carjackings, extortions, rapes and aggravated assaults -- including at least seven killings in Virginia and a machete attack on a 16-year-old in Alexandria (Virginia) that severely mutilated his hands."
El Shukrijumah, who was born in Saudi Arabia but is thought to be a Yemen national, is known to carry passports from Saudi Arabia, Trinidad, Guyana and Canada. He is said to have been in Canada last year looking for nuclear material for a so-called "dirty bomb." He was named in a March 2003 material-witness arrest warrant by federal prosecutors in Northern Virginia in connection with potential terrorist threats against the United States.
El Shukrijumah is thought to have been involved in the 9/11 attacks and was among the seven suspected al Qaeda operatives identified in May by Attorney General John Ashcroft as being involved in new plans to attack the United States.
Special Investigation: America's Border
http://www.apfn.org/apfn/ms-13.htm
