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Texas Border Vulnerable To (Venezuela-enabled) Terrorists
Robert Riggs(CBS 11 News) DALLAS A Congressional Homeland Security report accuses Venezuela of providing support that could help terrorists infiltrate the United States through Texas porous border with Mexico. The Subcommittee on Investigations of the House Homeland Security Committee found that the government of President Hugo Chavez has issued thousands of identity documents that could help terrorists elude immigration checks and illegally enter the United States. Representative Michael McCaul, a first term Republican from Austin, chaired the subcommittee that produced the findings, The potential is certainly there for terrorists to infiltrate the U.S. through Mexico. We apprehended five Pakistanis on the U.S. Mexico border with fraudulent Venezuelan documents. The report entitled, A Line in the Sand: Confronting the Threat at the Southwest Border, states that the number of aliens other than Mexican (OTMs) illegally crossing the border has grown at an alarming rate over the past several years. Homeland Security officials are concerned about aliens apprehended from thirty-five nations designated as special interest countries. Hundreds of aliens from special interest countries that are known to harbor terrorists or promote terrorism are routinely encountered and apprehended according to the report. The countries include Iran, Syria, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. The McAllen border sector far outpaces the rest of the country in Special Interest Alien apprehensions. Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, arrests of Special Interest Aliens have increased forty-one percent along the Texas/Mexico border and Texas has accounted for eighty-eight percent of the nations total apprehensions of Special Interest Aliens. McCaul says Mexican drug cartels that control human smuggling networks could be unwitting accomplices to transport terrorists into the U.S., I don't really trust the cartels to do a background check and a screening process in terms of whom they bring into this country. I don't think they really care. Federal law enforcement personnel told the subcommittees staff that it is difficult to provide the total number of Special Interest Aliens entering the U.S. because they pay large amounts of money, between $15,000 and $60,000, to employ the more effective Mexican alien smuggling organizations and are less likely to be apprehended. In August, an Afghani man was found swimming across the Rio Grande River in Hidalgo, Texas and last July in Jim Hogg County Border Patrol agents found a discarded jacket with patches from countries where al Qaeda is known to operate. The patches feature Arabic language martyrdom slogans that read way to eternal life and depict a jetliner crashing into the World Trade Center towers. McCaul is concerned that Chavez is turning Venezuela into a staging area for terrorism in Americas backyard, We know that Mr. Chavez in Venezuela has openly embraced the Islamic jihad world. We know that Hezbollah operatives have been given safe haven in Venezuela. So the threat is very real. Posted by: anonymous5089 2006-10-25 |
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