The Somali al Shabaab ‘infiltrator’ threat to America is real.

Ann Corcoran of Refugee Resettlement Watch sent us the latest revelations about something we predicted last year in an NER article, “Foot Soldiers of Islam":

FBI and local counter terrorism authorities need to step up monitoring of the radical Somali émigré communities In the US. This is a vital necessity to prevent swarming attack threats from returning American Somali Al Shabaab fighters who evade capture by US immigration and counter terrorism authorities. According to an article in WorldNet Daily, the FBI has launched such an effort beginning with the Washington, DC metro area. We need a comprehensive counter terrorism strategy. The US is vulnerable to home-grown naturalized Somali Jihadis initiating devastating Mumbai-type swarming attacks.

Now, as Corcoran points out in her RRW post, “Feds issue terror watch for Somalis coming across the border—too little too late”, Federal Homeland Security has issued warnings to Texas authorities about illegal Somali al Shabaab infiltrators. This is amid the continuing Federal trial in Alexandria Virginia of a suspected smuggler involved with large scale Somali illegal entry to America.

The Department of Homeland Security is alerting Texas authorities to be on the lookout for a suspected member of the Somalia-based Al Shabaab terrorist group who might be attempting to travel to the U.S. through Mexico, a security expert who has seen the memo tells FOXNews.com.

The warning follows an indictment unsealed this month in Texas federal court that accuses a Somali man in Texas of running a “large-scale smuggling enterprise” responsible for bringing hundreds of Somalis from Brazil through South America and eventually across the Mexican border. Many of the illegal immigrants, who court records say were given fake IDs, are alleged to have ties to other now-defunct Somalian terror organizations that have merged with active organizations like Al Shabaab, al-Barakat and Al-Ittihad Al-Islami.

In 2008, the U.S. government designated Al Shabaab a terrorist organization. Al Shabaab has said its priority is to impose Sharia, or Islamic law, on Somalia; the group has aligned itself with Al Qaeda and has made statements about its intent to harm the United States.

J. Peter Pham, senior fellow and director of the Africa Project at the National Committee on American Foreign Policy, said that for the past ten years there’s been suspicion by U.S. law enforcement that drug cartels could align with international terrorist organizations to bring would-be-jihadists into the U.S.

That kind of collaboration is already being seen in Africa, said Dr. Walid Phares, director of the Future Terrorism Project at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.

Too little too late—they are already here. See also the news about the Somali smuggler trial in Virginia last week.

Pham says the DHS alert comes too late. “They’re just covering themselves for the fact that DHS has been failing to date to deal effectively with this,” he said. “They’re already here.”

Michael Weinstein, a political science professor at Purdue University and an expert on Somalia, said, “In the past year, it’s become obvious that there’s a spillover into the United States of the transnational revolutionaries in Somalia.”

“It’s something that certainly has to be watched, but I don’t think it’s an imminent threat,” he said. “This has to be put in context with people smuggling — everybody and their brother is getting into the United States through Mexico; I read last week that some Chinese were crossing, it’s just a big market.”

Pham disagrees. “The real danger is ‘something along the lines of jihadist version of ‘find a classmate,’ he said, referring to Al Shabaab’s potential to set up sleeper cells in the U.S. “Most of them rely on personal referral and association. That type of social networking is not beyond their capabilities.”

Now, we know that the Somali Al Shabaab infiltration of America possible Mumbai-type swarming attacks could be of real concern. Has our government been lax about this? We think that they have. How else could 270 Somalis have been illegal smuggled into this country by the suspect on trial in Virginia.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/world/Somalis-with-terrorist-links-feared-headed-to-U_S_-border-89954247.html

Somalis with terrorist links feared headed to U.S. border

By: Sara A. Carter
National Security Correspondent
April 6, 2010

Somalis with ties to a terrorist organization are believed to be plotting to illegally enter the United States after being mistakenly released from custody in Mexico, a confidential federal law enforcement report said.

The report, obtained by the Washington Examiner, said that 23 Somalis who entered Mexico illegally earlier in the year were caught there, then released in late January.

Only 16 of the 23 people were identified by both Mexican and U.S. law enforcement officials, while the “other 7 are unknown,” the report says.

Included in the group is Mohamed Osman Noor, 35, of Somalia, who U.S. officials suspect has strong ties to Al-Shabaab Mujahideen, an Islamist insurgency group in the ongoing war in Somalia with ties to al Qaeda.

The report was written by an intelligence official with the Laredo Sector Border Intelligence Center, a joint federal task force under the Department of Homeland Security that operates on the border.

“All were in Mexican Immigration custody due to illegal entry into Mexico and were released on January 21, 2010,” it said. “All agents are reminded to maintain a heightened level of awareness and emphasize officer safety tactics when encountering individuals at all times. All agents are highly encouraged to wear ballistic armor, utilize long arms and work in groups when responding to illicit activity along the immediate border.”

According to the report, “Five of the subjects are possibly heading towards the Reynosa, Matamoros and Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas areas. ... The Laredo Sector should be cognizant of the high possibility that Noor and the other subjects may attempt to enter illegally into the United States through the Laredo Sector area of responsibility.”

Mexican officials could not be reached late Monday for comment.

Somalia has become a hotbed of al Qaeda-related terrorist activity since the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. It is being closely monitored by U.S. and foreign intelligence services.

Indications are that “some al Qaeda terrorista have undoubtedly ended up in Somalia and Yemen,” said a U.S. counterterrorism official.

A former U.S. government official who worked closely with Mexican authorities on border issues said he is “legitmately concerned of these suspected terrorists coming into the U.S. through leveraging and exploiting the many gaps along our southwest border.”

He added, “Something must have gone wrong internally for these persons to have been released by Mexican authorities. If you can move narcotics and other contraband through the porous border, you can’t tell me they don’t have the ability to move terrorists as well.”

Which is absolutely MADDENING, considering we have soldiers, in theater, fighting and dying for this country....all the while, OUR unsecured border leaves US...soldiers families...sitting ducks. I mean, we’d have to be, collectively, a completely STUPID people not to see this happening. But it IS. It’s like ‘who’s on first’, who’s in charge here.... WTH is going on that they, both Bush AND Obama, in spite of 9/11, time and again, ABSOLUTELY, IN OUR FACES, REFUSE to effectively secure the borders?

America is sleeping. If we can’t even get our borders secured, we, as a nation, are ‘all talk’ when it comes to defending our constitution, our country. We say, “Oh, but just let them try and (final straw here)”...when the REALITY is...they’re laughing in our faces saying “try and stop us”.

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