LETTER TO THE EDITOR

To Editor:

I receive articles from Judicial Watch, whose president is Tom Fitton.  One story I received today in his “Chronicles” is titled “Migrants from Terrorist Nations Try to Enter U.S. via Mexico at Record Rates.” It relates to the alarming number of “Special Interest Aliens (SIA) that pose a national security risk to the U.S. In Laredo, TX alone there was a “300% increase in immigrants from Bangladesh, a South Asian Islamic country well-known as a recruiting ground for terrorist groups such as ISIS and al-Qaida Indian Subcontinent (AQUIS)” The numbers of SIA’s has increased “thanks to established Transitional Criminal Org. (TCO) that facilitate travel along drug and migrant-smuggling routes.” “..tens of thousands of fraudulent documents – including passports and visas – that facilitated travel from their countries of origin through the Americas,” were seized.

“There are several cases of Islamic terrorists who made it to the U.S. via Mexico. Among them are Mohammad Aldairi, a Jordanian arrested last summer in New York for illegally smuggling SIA’s from Yemen across the U.S.-Mexico border into Texas. Others …included..:Pakistani Sharafat Ali Khan, convicted for smuggling fellow Pakistanis with terrorism ties into the United States; Somalian Abdullah Omar Fidse, a members of the al-Shabab terrorist group; Somalian Ahmed Muhammed Dhakane, a member of al-Qaida-linked Al-Barakat and Al-Ittihad al-Islami; and Lebanese Mahmoud Yousef Kourani, a fighter, recruiter and fundraiser for Hezbollah. Kourani paid a Beirut consular officer $3,000 for a Mexican visa and an additional $4,000 to be smuggled across the U.S.-Mexico border. Some of the other SIAs also operated smuggling rings through South and Central America.”

“Hezbollah is growing at an alarming rate in Latin America” according to Committee investigators. [House Homeland Security Committee].

Judicial Watch reports that last year in October, Guatemala government sources confirmed to them that SIAs waiting to get smuggled into the U.S. through Central America integrated with poor Hondurans in the caravan. “Among them were nationals of Bangladesh, which appears on the Treasury Office of Foreign Asset Control’s Counter Terrorism Designations list.”

If you are not concerned about just the sheer number of people coming here illegally, you might give a second thought to the above report. If not, then just keep your head buried in the sand.

Norma Thompson