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| Texas Border Vulnerable To (Venezuela-enabled) Terrorists |
| 2006-10-25 |
| 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 nation’s 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 subcommittee’s 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 America’s 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 |
| #6 Rantburg discussion, excerpts from report, images of patches here. |
| Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 2006-10-25 22:31 |
| #5 Btw, try http://www.rantburg.com/qsearch.php?q=tri-border. |
| Posted by: anonymous5089 2006-10-25 12:35 |
| #4 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. There was something about that in the local paper this morning. Essentially, Houston Congressman John Culberson spoke to a media group and accused the Venezuelan government of "issuing Venezuelan passports to Middle Eastern terrorists and allowing them to change their Islamic surnames to Hispanic and teaching them the language and the culture and getting them into Mexico where they're crossing the border." Which you must admit is pretty hot stuff. The next day, McCaul (head of the committee which wrote the report) came to address the same group, and was asked about Culberson's charge. He said (not in so many words) that Culberson was talking out his nether regions when he described the training camps, etc. And that they couldn't even pin the Pakistanis' documents on the Venezuelan government. However, the author of the article I linked, Rick Casey, goes straight from "I suppose you know, this means war" to "It's all a bunch of crap." In other words, even this CBS story is an exaggeration. (I'll point out that I've been unimpressed with Casey in the few times I've read him. Smug git.) Here's the link to the McCaul Report (PDF) for anyone who wants to wade through it. One of the items Casey refers to as an "old" press report is a Washington Times article from this spring in which Chavez tells Al Jazeera that "I am on the offensive." See page 31. |
| Posted by: Angie Schultz 2006-10-25 12:17 |
| #3 I dunno, I get my news from RB... |
| Posted by: anonymous5089 2006-10-25 12:16 |
| #2 Once again Rantburg beats the MSM to the punch. Someone (OldSpook?) posted a link to the actual report days ago. But I'm very glad to know the CBS local affiliate down in Texas has picked up on it -- good find, a5089. How do you find American news reports compared to French? ;-) |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2006-10-25 12:14 |
| #1 "Hundreds of aliens from “special interest” countries that are known to harbor terrorists or promote terrorism are routinely encountered and apprehended". Of course drug cartels don't give a shit where they get money. These Muzzie clowns have fist fulls. They are the cadre who will organize cells and terror missions. All this is well known, yet the federal government knowingly disregards the safety of the US homeland. Why ? What is the agenda ? This should be topic one on the discussion of border control. The same is occurring on Canadian border, where there really is no interdiction to speak of. This is folly. The public turns a blind eye to this, at the cost of their lives and cities. |
| Posted by: SpecOp35 2006-10-25 10:49 |