Posted on 10/26/2006 12:48:41 PM PDT by WatchingInAmazement
(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.”
(© MMVI, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
http://www.house.gov/mccaul/pdf/Investigaions-Border-Report.pdf
How is it that the average person, exercising common sense, secures his house before turning in each night yet the federal government seems incapable of exercising even a modicum of this same common sense?
So! Who is so mentally bankrupt that they required documented factual evidence of the completely obvious?
Intransigience of that severity is ripe for a charge of "accessory to the crime" and "criminal negligiance".
I would like to see what happened to these OTMs after they were arrested. There's that little *Catch and Release* thing that makes me wonder.
Curious, since the article is about Venezuela providing falsified documents, and it appears they were caught trying to use these to cross the border through a border crossing ... just how will a fence stop this ?
It's all part of the big mix, or should be. Border security, fence, wall, virtual wall, all of the above as far as I'm concerned. Come on over here with us buddy, on the border and see how it is for yourself. It's not a single-issue problem.
Now I hear S. Texas farmers whining about not having enough workers because of the fence. THE FENCE AIN'T BUILT DUMMIES! Sheesh. They are wanting us to approve of a permanent ILLEGAL underclass for their benefit. I challenge you: the price of produce is not any cheaper because of cheap labor, let me assure you; besides, those folks have finally learned their wage per hour value and can demand it, which is okay, that's a free market concept. But they're going to have to do it LEGALLY as far as I'm concerned.
just how will a fence stop this ?
You obviously know it won't. But it might slow down the other 155,000 OTM's last year that they caught crossing anywhere they wanted. It would help to flush out the corrupt border patrol from all the bribes and corruption taking place within their ranks at ports of entry.
" Last year 1.2 million illegal aliens were stopped at our southern border with Mexico. Most of those illegal aliens were from Mexico, and according to the border patrol, for every illegal alien apprehended three successfully enter the United States. That means perhaps as many as three million illegal aliens succeed in entering the country, but also an increasing number from countries known to sponsor terrorism are making it into this country. They're called OTMs, other than Mexico. Last year U.S. border patrol agents apprehended 155,000 people from countries other than Mexico. The general estimate is that for every person apprehended at our borders three get through. The math on that number is particularly disturbing. The Los Angeles Sheriff's Department, for example, has studied criminal illegal aliens and studied those aliens who have been deported after they had served time in the Los Angeles county jails.
That study revealed that 70 percent of those illegal aliens were re-arrested again -- arrested, in fact, four more times. The Drug Enforcement Administration says $25 billion in drug money crosses our border with Mexico each and every year. Some estimates put it as high as 40 billion."
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0610/25/ldt.02.html
Just wait, they'll show.
We always pointed at the French and teased them for allowing the Germans to simply walk into their country and take it over, without the French firing a single shot, but instead offering the German's their wine and women.
Now it seems we are doing the exact same thing. Except there is nobody to come save us from our own stupidity.
I know they were gathering plane loads of them to transport back to their home countries but, I'm pretty sure the planes weren't going to Asia, the ME or even China.
The Drug Enforcement Administration says $25 billion in drug money crosses our border with Mexico each and every year. Some estimates put it as high as 40 billion."The vast majority of that money is flowing FROM the U.S. to Mexico, not the other way around. If people in the U.S. really wanted to dry up the Mexican drug trade, and stop the gang wars, they should stop buying narcotics.
I don't blame the Mexican marijuana and poppy farmers for growing crops that they can sell any more than I blame grape growers for alchoholism... but Mexico is only a minor supplier compared to other countries. It is a major TRANSHIPPER, and it's the export trade that causes a lot of the violence you read about in U.S. papers.
If the violence worries people, they should stop buying drugs. It would also eliminate the drug smugglers crossing the border, naturally.
We must stop the TERRORIST from entering the United States from our Southern Boarder! A deafening roar of racism will result–but with the country at war, pandering to the race advocates must give way to protecting American lives.
Homeland Security Report 39 pages some pictures:
http://hsc.house.gov/PDFs/InvestigaionsSubcommitteereport.pdf
We must stop the TERRORIST from entering the United States from our Southern Boarder! A deafening roar of racism will result–but with the country at war, pandering to the race advocates must give way to protecting American lives
You get right on that and let us know how to go about it. Man has been injesting drugs since he first drew breath. No society has ever been able to stop drug usage. Unless you want to live like the Taliban
I believe it was for the cantaloupe harvest listening to the rant on the radio this PM, not sure about what else. You know, it really gets aggravating, sometimes you wonder if half the country has a brain. I don't understand what is so difficult about enforcing immigration laws. Nothing is 100% but I'll take whatever we can get for now.
"Come on over here with us buddy, on the border and see how it is for yourself. "
I am ...
"Now I hear S. Texas farmers whining about not having enough workers because of the fence. THE FENCE AIN'T BUILT DUMMIES! "
You don't seem to understand ... Texas farmers WANTING illegals IS the problem ... What we are already doing is working .... THEY are the ones CAUSING the problem ....
Screw them --- so-called Americans selling out our security for cash !
"You obviously know it won't. "
... and I obviously know the other stuff you spout has nothing to do with this thread and since you provided no links to your "facts" it makes no sense to dispute them ...
EXACTLY right - and the way to stop illegals is to cut off the supply of jobs - if American employers would stop waving the " come up here and I'll pay you big bucks " flag, we would have less of a problem.
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