Posted on 08/17/2004 11:24:39 PM PDT by yonif
MEXICO CITY - (KRT) - Fears that terrorists might enter the United States via remote stretches of the border with Mexico are not based on idle chatter, according to authorities on both sides.
Dozens of bulletins and requests for help have been forwarded by U.S. intelligence agencies to their Mexican counterparts in the last year. The information triggered searches and investigations into a number of incidents. They include:
The possible entry from Belize into Mexico's Quintana Roo state, south of Cancun, of a Middle Eastern migrant named Adnam Gushair Shukrijumah. His name reportedly matches one on a U.S. law enforcement watch list, Mexican officials said. Published reports in Mexico said the nation's law enforcement agencies have been warned by U.S. authorities that Shukrijumah previously had been tracked in Honduras and Panama.
Flight plans in December by two men - listed by Mexican authorities as Ali M. Safia and Can Azif - whose names also scored hits on U.S. watch lists. The pair arrived in Mexico in the winter of 2003 on one-way tickets from Europe, Mexican officials said. While in Europe they also had purchased one-way tickets for a flight from the western Mexican city of Culiacan to Los Angeles. The pair failed to show for the flight and have not been seen since.
The arrest in Tijuana in November of Imelda Ortiz Abdala, a former Mexican diplomat in Lebanon. Ortiz Abdala is accused of participating in a ring that prepared faked Mexican travel documents for migrants from Middle Eastern countries and helped smuggle them into the U.S.
"We cannot discount these incidents. We can't afford to ignore anything," said a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
None of these incidents has produced proof of al-Qaida or other related terrorist activity in Mexico, but U.S. and Mexican authorities said they are nonetheless worried.
In recent weeks, reports have circulated on the Internet about groups of Arabic-speaking Middle Eastern men marching across the U.S. border. The reports are unsubstantiated, however, and have been dismissed by both U.S. and Mexican officials.
Until recently, Mexico was used as a hideout by Basque separatists escaping justice in Spain, as well as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia - groups labeled terrorist by the U.S. government. And the Mexico City newspaper Milenio recently quoted a Mexican intelligence report that chronicled the presence in Mexico of suspected Hezbollah supporters.
Since June, Mexican federal police counterterrorism units have been on heightened alert because of intelligence reports shared by U.S. officials of possible terrorist movements this summer and fall.
"We've been alerted to the concerns, and we're ready for anything. No defense is perfect, but we're trying to anticipate and plan for every kind of possible terrorist move here," said a Mexican federal police official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
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Mexican authorities insist that no proven "bad Arab" has been found in Mexico since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, D.C.
That, however, has not kept Mexican officials from unleashing the country's commando-style counterterrorism teams.
"Mexicans are jumping all over" the intelligence reports, said the U.S. official, referring to heightened fears among Mexicans that their country could be used as a conduit for terrorism or that terrorists could strike against U.S. interests in Mexico.
For example, reports that Shukrijumah had crossed into Mexico from Belize last month are being taken seriously, said Jose Luis Santiago Vasconcelos, chief of Mexico's organized crime task force.
"We don't have objective evidence to confirm that he is in Mexico ... but the alert was sounded, and we are looking for him," Santiago Vasconcelos said in an interview. "Our starting point is our national security, and that's why we moved immediately to the search. ... Secondarily, it's about solidarity, more than anything, with the United States."
Another incident, shrouded in mystery, is the December planned apprehension by the Mexican counterterrorism squad of the two men of Middle Eastern origin who purchased one-way tickets to Los Angeles. The suspects reportedly were traveling with three other men.
Mexican law enforcement officials said they tracked the two men after their arrival from Europe and saw that they were scheduled to fly from Culiacan, in the northwestern Mexican state of Sinaloa. Officials determined that the pair had purchased the one-way tickets in Europe. Mexico's Special Operations Group - attached to the Federal Preventive Police - reacted and waited at the airport.
But the men never showed for the flight.
One Mexican federal police official said an investigation into the incident yielded nothing of substance. Another called it a hoax. However, a third official - a commander who participated in the investigation - said "there was something" to the Culiacan incident.
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Visa-selling and smuggling by current and former Mexican immigration agents also are of concern to anti-terrorism officials because they expose a weakness in what is otherwise considered laudable counterterrorism work by Mexican authorities.
"There continues to be concern about the institutional weakness in Mexico, especially in the area of law enforcement. There is still a lack of confidence in Mexico's abilities - the immigration enforcement is a mess," said Armand Pechard-Sverdrup, director of the Mexico Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.
Even before the Tijuana raid that nabbed Ortiz Abdala, the former consular official in Lebanon, agents from Mexico's attorney general's office had already targeted the country's National Migration Institute because of evidence of systemic corruption.
In the last two years, at least 50 former and current Mexican immigration agents and bureaucrats have been arrested and charged with corruption. A Mexican government report this week said the accused officials had registered at least $2 million worth of bank transactions and used at least 70 vehicles to smuggle people across the border.
"The U.S. has no choice but to work with Mexico and help foster its law enforcement institutions because Washington has seen the reality that we can't ensure border security on our own," said Pechard-Sverdrup, whose group recently authored a detailed analysis of the potential for terrorist strikes in Mexico. "The U.S. needs Mexico. The U.S. needs Canada."
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Exacerbating fears of terrorists using the vast and largely unpopulated border region as an entry point was the July 19 arrest of a woman who tried to board a flight from McAllen-Miller International Airport in South Texas to New York. She was apprehended by the FBI and remains in federal custody.
Farida Goolam Mahomed Ahmed had checked in for the flight, but airport personnel became suspicious. A search of her belongings yielded $7,000 in cash, muddy clothes and a mutilated South African passport.
U.S. law enforcement officials have refused to comment on Ahmed, although one said investigators "are concerned" about the incident.
Her arrest preceded a warning on July 29 from the FBI to local police in New Mexico and California of possible - although not specified - terrorist threats near the border. Subsequently, a broadcast news report from New York said a suspect tied to al-Qaida had told U.S. officials of a plan to sneak terrorists across the U.S.-Mexico border.
I imagine a bribe to Mexican Officials is not outside the realm of real possibilities....heck they might have even gotten an armed escort into the U.S.
Should be easy to fix this problem. Just offer cash rewards to Mexican citizens that see or know of Middle Eastern people crossing the border form Mexico to the US. If that does not work, just offer them citizenship.
ping
Terrorists have probably already entered the US through these non-secured borders. They may be waiting in time for a planned wave of suicide bombings, etc. or trying to establish terror cells in the US, probably with the aid of militant Muslims.
Sorry, but I just don't think there is any "probably" about it. Like I posted in another thread recently, if 1/100th of one percent of the illegals crossing were terrorists, we're likely to have THOUSANDS of them here with valid Mexican ID cards and safe passage already completed to the US. We're spending BILLIONS on Homeland Security and leaving the barn door wide open to terrorists. These savages will use every opportunity that we give them to get to us.
The US government will regret trusting Mexico to help protect us. Its very obvious, They cannot even keep their own people from entering this country (Yea, they really want to do that) illegally... How the hell are they gonna stop terrorists?
Ya think? or as my teen ager says..."DUH!!" Man when are we gonna close these borders and throw out ALL who are here illegally? yeah I know maybe when hell freezes over
Today in McAllen the BP arrested 22 Chinese smuggled from Mexico. If Mexico can't detect Chinese in their country, how do we expect them to detect MEs????
But the fact is that there is no evidence of any terrorists illegally crossing the Southern border. Neither the Congressional intelligence committees, the 9/11 Commission, the FBI, Homeland Defense, INS or any of the leaders of the Republican and Democrat parties have expressed any dissatisfaction with our Southern border security. Calls for diligence in border security are not any different than calls for diligence in urban areas; and certainly aren't reasons for hysterical panic.
They are privy to information that you are not. You do not know how many undercover agents and paid informants we have in Mexico. You do not know what electronic surveillance resources are dedicated to the Southern border.
Don't assume that just because we don't waste resources apprehending everyone who comes here to work at our dirtiest and lowest paying jobs that we aren't effectively preventing Muslim terrorists from entering.
Bump.
I'm glad this is in the news as hopefully it'll knock some common sense into certain people.
you better go back and read the 9/11 report again....still need cheap labor eh?
Still using national security to hide your dislike of Mexican immigrants?
I have no problenm with legal immigrants from Mexico.
Kean said that strengthening border security is as vital as organizational changes, but would have significantly more costs -- and possibly be less attractive for Congress to take up.
http://grumet.net/911/recommendations.html
The U.S. border security system should be integrated into a larger network of screening points that includes our transportation system and access to vital facilities, such as nuclear reactors. The President should direct the Department of Homeland Security to lead the effort to design a comprehensive screening system, addressing common problems and setting common standards with systemwide goals in mind. Extending those standards among other governments could dramatically strengthen America and the world's collective ability to intercept individuals who pose catastrophic threats.
Document Page Number: 387, PDF Page Number: 405, View in context: page, section, chapter
The Department of Homeland Security, properly supported by the Congress, should complete, as quickly as possible, a biometric entry-exit screening system, including a single system for speeding qualified travelers. It should be integrated with the system that provides benefits to foreigners seeking to stay in the United States. Linking biometric passports to good data systems and decisionmaking is a fundamental goal. No one can hide his or her debt by acquiring a credit card with a slightly different name. Yet today, a terrorist can defeat the link to electronic records by tossing away an old passport and slightly altering the name in the new one.
Then you should support the President's reform proposals.
I don't see anything in the 9/11 Commission report about thousands of terrorists pouring across the Southern border. All of their recommendations pertain to legal border crossing points and airports. There is no recommendation to build a great wall on the border, or bring in the army to patrol, or even increase the number of border patrols.
On the Northern border we have one guard for every 13.5 miles. On the Southern border we have five guards for every mile.
They are privy to information that you are not. You do not know how many undercover agents and paid informants we have in Mexico. You do not know what electronic surveillance resources are dedicated to the Southern border.
Don't assume that just because we don't waste resources apprehending everyone who comes here to work at our dirtiest and lowest paying jobs that we aren't effectively preventing Muslim terrorists from entering.
Sorry pal, but the human smuggling operators in Mexico are sophisticated. The BP is severly undermanned, let alone have hundreds of guys out in the desert looking for guys dressed like ME's. Tell me, would you be able to distinguish an Middle Easterner from a Mexican. I lived in Saudi Arabia for a year and couldn't confidentually tell you that I could. I am extremely confident that you won't be so optimistic 24 hours after a multi-city attack and it is determined that 2-3,000 ME's are here and making your USA a scarier place than you could have ever envisioned.
God, in this one, I'd love to be able to come back here in 6 mos, a year, or 2 or 5 and say that I was wrong, but don't think mthat will happen.
Still spewing your racist BS?
Don't forget how many times the Mexican government has helped America in time of war.
NEVER, but they do help their people and others in CRIMINALY INVADING our Country.
We're screwed.
George Bush is horrible on the border. There needs to be 100,000 troops on the border. See here's where people are wong. People are saying, Bush doesn't want to put the military on the border not offend the hispanics. He wants there vote. But the problem with this argument. Say Bush wins the Presidency in November. After he wins, he has no more elections to worry about. He still wont put troops on the border. He doesn't need the spanish vote anymore, cause he's done with elections. But even with that, he still wont put troops on the border.
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