Hundreds of illegal aliens from ISIS recruiting grounds have been caught entering the United States this year, a new report documents.
Washington watchdog Judicial Watch, which has reported a number of times on illegals from terror hot spots entering the country through Mexico, recently cited the catches made in the Laredo Border Patrol Sector.
Laredo, the report said is “the favorite crossing point into the U.S. for illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, a recruiting ground for terrorist groups such as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, and al-Qaida Indian Subcontinent.”
Citing figures from Customs and Border Protection, Judicial Watch said Laredo has the “highest apprehension of Bangladeshi nationals.”
“At last count, the figure has increased to 209 this year and growing … There’s no telling now many have slipped in,” the new report said.
“A growing number of illegal aliens from terrorist nations – including Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh – have tried to enter the U.S. through Mexico in the last few years. In 2015 Judicial Watch reported that dozens of them were held in a Texas Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) processing center after entering the U.S. illegally through Mexico,” Judicial Watch said.
“One of the detainees who is a national of Bangladesh said he arrived in El Paso after traveling from South American to Juarez, Mexico. At the time, the U.S. had just issued a terrorism alert warning that militants in Bangladesh may be targeting westerners. Years ago, Judicial Watch also reported that Mexican drug cartels are smuggling foreigners from countries with terrorist links into a small Texas rural town near El Paso. The foreigners are classified as Special Interest Aliens (SIA) by the U.S. government.”
Two years ago, the State Department was discussing a “significant increase in terrorist activity” in Bangladesh, mostly from the work of ISIS and AQIS.
“That year ISIS claimed responsibility for 18 attacks in Bangladesh, including a July 1 attack on a restaurant in Dhaka’s diplomatic enclave, which killed 22 people. The terrorists spared hostages who could demonstrate that they were Muslim by reciting verses from the Quran, according to the State Department,” Judicial Watch said.
“The other attacks were generally machete attacks on individuals from minority groups or law enforcement entities,” the State Department said then.
ISIS-Bangladesh was added by the Treasury Office of Foreign Asset Control to its sanctions list, the report said.
“A multitude of news and academic reports have also documented the growing terrorism threat in Bangladesh. The country has a large amount of Islamist violence … and is plagued by illicit financial transfers typically used by terrorist groups,” Judicial Watch said.
“It is suspected that militants regularly tap into these illegal money flows to fund their operations,” a government report found. “More than $1 billion in taxable goods is smuggled into the country from India, and analysts believe that some of this money ends up in the hands of terrorist groups. This is also the case with small arms sales, drugs and counterfeit U.S. dollars that enter Bangladesh from neighboring Myanmar and the Golden Triangle.”
Judicial Watch pointed out that last year a Bangladeshi man in the U.S. with a chain migration family visa, Akayed Ullah, attempted to blow up a New York subway corridor with a pipe bomb.
It was just a year ago that WND reported ISIS apparently was setting up training camps in Mexico just across the border from Texas.
At the time, Texas issued the Texas Public Safety Threat Overview, which said that “due to the recent actions of lone offenders or small groups affiliated with or inspired by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and other foreign terrorist organizations, we assess that the current terrorism threat to Texas is elevated.”
“We are especially concerned about the potential for terrorist infiltration across the U.S.-Mexico border, particularly as foreign terrorist fighters depart Syria and Iraq and enter global migration flows.
“We are concerned about the challenges associated with the security vetting of Syrian war refugees or asylum seekers who are resettled in Texas – namely, that derogatory security information about individuals is inaccessible or nonexistent. We see a potential that these challenges may leave the state exposed to extremist actors who pose as authentic refugees, and who are determined to later commit violent acts,” the state explained.
Via WND
