Iraqi Accused of Smuggling Hundreds in Mideast to U.S.

L PASO, Oct. 25 — An Iraqi-born smuggler led hundreds of illegal immigrants from the Middle East across the Mexican border into the United States in the 1990's, prosecution documents filed in a Federal conspiracy trial here say.

The Iraqi, George Tajirian, who forged an alliance with a Mexican immigration officer, smuggled Palestinian, Jordanian, Syrian, Iraqi, Yemeni and other undocumented immigrants through Mexico and into the United States, sending them to wade across the Rio Grande or pass border checkpoints with counterfeit travel documents from Greece, Mexico and other nations, the prosecutors said.

Mr. Tajirian appears to have had no political or other agenda, and prosecutors have provided no evidence that any of the people he smuggled had terrorist ties. But prosecutors said he had paid little heed to whether his clients were criminals, merely raising his smuggling fees when he learned of such complications.

The record of prosecution proceedings against Mr. Tajirian and Angel Molina Páramo, the Mexican official who prosecutors say was a major confederate, suggest that America's Southwestern border has been a thoroughfare for hundreds of Middle Eastern migrants crossing illegally into the United States in recent years.

Mr. Tajirian, who is a naturalized Mexican citizen, was arrested in Miami in 1998, pleaded guilty to smuggling undocumented foreigners in a plea agreement that erased conspiracy and other charges, and is serving 13 years. Mr. Molina was extradited to Texas by the Mexican government this spring. A federal judge here accepted his guilty plea last week in a plea bargain, and sentencing is set for next month. Mr. Tajirian's wife, who is a Mexican citizen, and a fourth person accused in the conspiracy, a Lebanese woman who ran Mr. Tajirian's travel agency in Quito, Ecuador, are fugitives.

The documents pertaining to Mr. Tajirian's smuggling operations were presented to the court in the case against Mr. Molina and the two fugitives. Among the documents was one in which federal prosecutors said they collected detailed evidence on 132 illegal immigrants Mr. Tajirian smuggled into the United States from 1996 through 1998.

The prosecutors estimated that since he began to build his smuggling organization in 1980 he had led more than 1,000 Middle East natives across the southwest frontier.

Mr. Tajirian showed "no scruples" in deciding whom he would smuggle into the United States, Assistant United States Attorney J. Brandy Gardes wrote in a brief before Mr. Tajirian's sentencing in 1998. One citizen of Yemen whom Mr. Tajirian brought to America in December 1997 was wanted for genocide in South Yemen, the prosecutors said. Mr. Tajirian, the prosecutors said, was aware of this and, accordingly, raised his fee. A Syrian native who was smuggled across the frontier in September 1996 had a criminal record in Germany.

"The tightening of our borders and our internal security," Ms. Gardes wrote, "is a priority and the desire of the American public. The defendant's criminal activity, through its sheer magnitude and cavalier attitude, struck deeply at these goals."

In documents presented to the court, prosecutors said Mr. Tajirian routinely charged clients $10,000 to $15,000 or more. They documented earnings of $230,000 from 1996 through 1998, and estimated that he grossed as much as $2 million during that period. Prosecutors say Mr. Tajirian is 60 years old. He says he is 70.

Statistics gathered by the Immigration and Naturalization Service suggest that citizens from countries with majority Islamic populations seek to gain entry to the United States illegally much more frequently at the Canadian border than at the Mexican. Last year, American agents detained 254 undocumented immigrants, from 16 Middle Eastern countries, Sudan, Pakistan and Malaysia, at Canadian border checkpoints, according to the I.N.S. statistics.

By contrast, at the Mexican border, agents detained 90 undocumented immigrants last year from countries with majority Islamic populations: Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan and Pakistan. The Mideast migrants were moving in a human tide that was overwhelmingly Latin. Some 99.9 percent of the 1.64 million undocumented immigrants detained at the southwest border last year were from Mexico and 16 other Latin countries.

The documents presented here detail more than any other case the nature of the smuggling pipeline by which illegal Middle Eastern immigrants cross the Southwestern border.

Mr. Tajirian, who was born in Baghdad, came to the United States and settled in Detroit, where he was convicted in the late 1970's for illegal possession of visas and served eight months in prison. Almost immediately after his release, Mr. Tajirian began building his smuggling network, prosecutors said.

He recruited Middle Eastern clients in Jordan, Syria, Palestine and Greece, the prosecutors said, and he established travel agencies in Havana and Mexico City as well as Quito. In a typical smuggling transaction, Mr. Tajirian would recruit his clients, arrange lodging for them in Greece, Havana, Quito and Mexico City, and eventually arrange for local smugglers in northern Mexico to bring them into the United States, usually at El Paso or Laredo in Texas or through Tijuana, south of San Diego.

Mr. Molina helped by arranging for Mr. Tajirian's clients to pass unchallenged through the Mexico City airport, where Mr. Molina was based as an immigration officer until his arrest in 1999. He also helped the clients make contact with local smugglers in northern Mexico.

Mr. Tajirian's lawyer, Francisco Macias, did not answer telephone messages left at his El Paso office.

CHICAGO, Oct. 25 — A Chicago man charged with making fake identification for illegal immigrants nationwide helped the authorities in a sting that led to the arrest of eight people. United States Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald said that the man, Joseph M. Kalady, 61, made fake birth certificates that were used to obtain Social Security cards and passports. Mr. Fitzgerald said each customer paid $5,000 for the phony documents.

U.S. Armed Forces Should Protect American Soil

by Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX)

October 26, 2001

The tragic events of the past month have forced both President Bush and Congress to reassess the priorities of our federal government. The obvious consensus is that we have to do a better job of protecting Americans against future acts of war here on our own soil. Indeed, the President has promised that his administration will use every available resource to fight the war on terrorism. Yet our most potent resource, the U.S. military, is spread far too thin around the world to adequately protect us from growing terrorist hostilities and the possibility of a full-scale war.

The sober reality is that on September 11th millions of foreigners abroad were better protected by American armed forces than were our own citizens at home. In fact, on that fateful morning we had tens of thousands of soldiers and billions of dollars in weapons deployed worldwide – all standing by helplessly while our citizens were savagely attacked in New York and Washington.

It is beyond frustrating to consider that there are literally dozens of places around the globe where an unauthorized commercial jet straying off course would have been confronted by American fighters, yet the New York skyline and even the Pentagon were left almost completely unprotected. The American people have a right to know, for example, why the Iraq-Kuwait border, the DMZ between North and South Korea, and the skies over Serbia were better defended that morning than our own cities, borders, and skies.

We must understand that U.S. troops currently are permanently or semi-permanently stationed in more than one hundred countries. As one prominent columnist recently noted, the 15 years since the collapse of the Soviet empire and the end of the Cold War have hardly been peaceful for the United States. Our armed forces have been engaged in dozens of conflicts, including Iraq, Somalia, Haiti, and Kosovo. We currently maintain active military commitments throughout the Middle East, Colombia and Central America, the Balkans, Eastern Europe, central Asia, and the Taiwan Strait.

We undoubtedly are involved in more regional conflicts than at any other time in our history; in fact, our present obligations make the east vs. west Cold War seem relatively manageable! Yet our military is only half the size it was during the Reagan era. This imbalance between our shrinking armed forces and ever-growing military role in foreign disputes leaves our own borders woefully unprotected.

Examples of the ill effects of our misguided policies are not hard to find. Consider the Coast Guard, whose seemingly obvious mission is to secure America's coastlines. So why are Coast Guard vessels busy patrolling Mediterranean waters and the shoreline of Colombia? Similarly, why do we need the help of German NATO AWACS planes to patrol American skies when we have 33 of our own? Are all 33 being used overseas?

The simple solution is not huge increases in defense spending. The federal budget is not unlimited; taxpayers cannot be expected to pay infinite amounts of money for national defense. While non-defense spending certainly should be cut drastically, the most realistic approach is to reassign most of our troops currently overseas to stateside duty defending our borders.

Clearly our efforts in playing policeman to the world have failed to make us more secure. This does not mean that we are in any way responsible for the barbaric acts of Bin Laden or any other fanatical murderers who hate the U.S. Yet we have no choice but to honestly assess the threats we now face here at home in the wake of these terrorist attacks. The most basic and important function of our government must be to provide national defense, and our overseas commitments directly interfere with the government's ability to defend you and your family.

Ron Paul, M.D., represents the 14th District of Texas in the United States House of Representatives.

we need our military here...

True, it doesn't happen often, but I disagree with you on this one....unless changes are made in the DOD and the way we handle border security.

1. The US military is NOT big enough now to handle its wartime mission. We don't have enough ships at sea, wings in the air, or troops on the ground. Until this is fixed our military should focus on training to fight war. The Governors with the National Guards under their control should protect the borders as long as our military is so small. After all, we can tolerate some seepage at the border, but the NO Nation can recover from losing on the battlefield. A loss in wartime means the end of nationhood. Given that, our troops should focus on their PRIMARY mission -- training for and winning all-out war.

2. The draft. If we add more people to the military, then the program should look like the relationship the DOD has had for years with the Coast Guard. They have been part of the DOD, but were specifically focused on guarding our "coastal" border. We need another force called the "Border Guard" to go along with the Coast Guard. The should number about a million and should be assigned to national service after a fair, all-inclusive draft.

AS USUAL, ALL PATHS LEAD TO THE 8 DISASTROUS YEARS OF THE CLINTON PRESIDENCY.

.........................................................

"Based on discussions with an Immigration
and Naturalization Service (INS) source,
Judicial Watch said today that the Florida
District of the INS has engaged in a systematic
program of rushing aliens through the
naturalization process to meet INS
headquarters "goals" by October 1, 1999 and
October 1, 2000. In Florida, a new citizen can
register to vote up to October 10th. An INS
source told Judicial Watch that the program
is nearly identical to the now infamous 1996
"Citizenship USA" program, wherein
thousands of aliens some with criminal
backgrounds were improperly and illegally
rushed through the naturalization process in
order to obtain Democratic votes for the
presidential election. "

.................................................................................................................

FROM ANOTHER REPORT:

"Brokaw, Jennings, and Rather also napped through news of a scarier scandal. As David Schippers, former Chief Investigative Counsel for the House Judiciary Committee, writes in his best-selling new book, "Sellout: The Inside Story of President Clinton's Impeachment," Al Gore headed an operation called "Citizenship USA". Schippers explains how Gore's staff dragooned the Immigration and Naturalization Service into accelerating citizenship applications so newly-minted Americans might vote for Clinton-Gore.

Schippers cites e-mails in which Gore aide Douglas Farbrother said that "to get the results the Vice President wants," INS officials should "waive stupid rules." In a March 28, 1996 message to Gore, Farbrother wonders whether INS officials "could produce a million new citizens before election day." "We'll explore it. Thanks," Gore replied by e-mail that day.

Team Gore's zeal let 75,000 applicants with arrest records leapfrog FBI background and fingerprint checks. Schippers says that when the FBI probed a sample of 100 new citizens in summer 1998, 20 of them had been arrested for and some convicted of violent felonies including hostage taking, sexual assault and homicide. "At least one individual received his citizenship while serving time in jail," Schippers told me. He added: "The pressure put on immigration professionals by the political operatives under the direction of vice president Gore's office totally broke down the safeguards that surround the citizenship process."

When Schippers — an active Democrat who twice voted for Clinton-Gore — accuses Al Gore of helping potential rapists and murderers become Americans to support his reelection, that's news. Although CNN and Fox News have interviewed Schippers (as did CBS' Early Show), the three big news hounds have been sniffing around elsewhere.

Shoehorning foreign-born criminals into voting booths reveals a lethal disregard for public safety and an affront to millions of law-abiding immigrants who patiently await naturalization."

....................................................................................................................

FROM ANOTHER REPORT:

"It was the issue the presidential candidates and the major media didn't want to talk about -- immigration. And yet immigrants, many of them illegal, may have provided Al Gore with millions of votes on November 7th. Indeed, Gore was the administration official who engineered the fraudulent "Citizenship USA" program that brought illegal aliens with criminal backgrounds and potential terrorists into the U.S. as citizens.

In his book, Sell Out, David Schippers says, "The program was placed under the direction of Vice President Al Gore...He was responsible for keeping the pressure on, to make sure the aliens were pushed through by September, [1996], the last day to register for the presidential election." Under the law, only qualified immigrants with no significant criminal history may be admitted. But Schippers found more than 75,000 new citizens had arrest records when they applied for citizenship. Another 176,000 citizens did not have their fingerprints checked for criminal records.

A Congressional investigation of the scandal disclosed the following:

-----Hillary Rodham Clinton was involved in discussions on how liberal groups could facilitate the process of making aliens into citizens.

-----Al Gore and his staff were involved in discussions on how to "produce a million new citizens before election day," and President Clinton was reported to have said he "wants action."

-----One option for President Clinton was to order "lower" standards for U.S. citizenship, so they could be made "more liberal."

-----That Immigration and Naturalization Service director Doris Meissner warned that the campaign could be perceived to be "a pro-Democrat voter mill."

In terms of the 2000 election results in Florida, the carefully cultivated media image of Jewish ladies mistakenly voting for Pat Buchanan is a fraud. The real story is that thousands -- perhaps tens of thousands -- of illiterate non-English-speaking non-citizens were herded to the polls to vote for Al Gore. The process of recounting ballots doesn't determine whether the votes were valid, or whether they were cast by American citizens who were registered voters. It may only show how some of them were not competent enough to cast a vote."

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