http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1051740/posts "Smuggling alien interests?" (Arabs through Mexico)
Washington Times ^ | 1/5/04 | Terence Jeffrey
Posted on 01/05/2004 3:11:14 AM PST by Elkiejg
ARTICLE SNIPPET: "The real life horror story that began 18 months ago when an Arab illegal alien named Youseff Balaghi showed up at a San Diego hospital, dying from what the Border Patrol initially and erroneously feared was radiation sickness, has now reached high into Mexico´s foreign service.
On September 11, 2001, Imelda Ortiz Abdala was Mexico´s consul in Lebanon. On Nov. 12, 2003, Mexican authorities arrested her, according to the Associated Press, "on charges of helping a smuggling ring move Arab migrants into the United States from Mexico." The AP said Mexico had also arrested as the ring leader Salim Boughader Mucharrafille. Boughader had earlier pleaded guilty in the United States to the smuggling incident that resulted in Mr. Balaghi´s death.
Unfortunately, this story is not over.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Mike Skerlos prosecuted Boughader. Last week, citing Mrs. Ortiz´s arrest, I asked him if there were still smugglers bringing Middle Easterners in from Mexico.
"Yes," he said.
Far from Iraq, there´s another front where the terrorism war is not over. It´s on our own border and, here, the key enemies are the smugglers who bring people such as Mr. Balaghi into California, and who collaborate with corrupt officials.
In congressional testimony in 2002, then-Assistant Immigration and Naturalization Service Commissioner Joseph Greene said: "Information available to the INS indicates terrorist organizations often use human smuggling operations to move around the globe." According to a Library of Congress study, "Organized Crime and Terrorist Activity in Mexico, 1999-2002," former Mexican national security adviser Adolfo Aguilar Zinser said in May 2001: "Spanish and Islamic terrorist groups are using Mexico as a refuge."
How is the United States countering the threat of terrorists using human smuggling operations and finding refuge in Mexico? Rather than secure our border generally, the government tolerates large-scale illegal immigration, while trying to selectively stop the smuggling operations most likely to move terrorists. The administration, Mr. Greene told Congress, has put in place an "enforcement initiative aimed at targeting alien smuggling organizations specializing in the movement of U.S.-bound aliens from countries that are of interest to the national security of the United States."
Mr. Balaghi was from Lebanon."