A Former Gitmo Inmate Tries To Slip Across The Border, Perhaps To Commit The Terrorist Acts That Americans Just Won’t Do

by John Hawkins | April 28, 2006 7:40 am

This[1] is very disturbing:

As the nation continues to debate what to do about our southern border, I thought I would point out a piece of informaton I found in a cache of documents released by the Pentagon in early March. In connection with a lawsuit brought by the Associated Press, the Pentagon released thousands of pages of documents transcribed during tribunal hearings for the hundreds of terror suspects held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. There is a lot of interesting information in those documents, including the allegations against one detainee who was caught while trying to sneak across the Mexican border.

…The U.S. government alleges that the detainee “attempted to be smuggled into the United States” and “traveled with forged travel documents, including a passport and other travel documents.” The detainee admits that he was caught while attempting to illegally enter the U.S., but claims that he “was going to find a job to make some money.”

…The government alleges, “The Detainee left Pakistan ten months previous to his detention by paying a smuggler in Pakistan twenty-five thousand dollars (US) to be smuggled into the U.S.” The detainee does not deny this allegation, but claims that the fee “was paid in Pakistani currency, one million rupies, about sixteen to eighteen thousand dollars. This would get paid when I got to the United States.” He adds, “My father owns an oil tanker, which he would sell to make the payment. Also, it was only eight months after I left Pakistan to when I was captured.”

Maybe it’s just me, but when someone suspected by the government of terrorist activity pays $25,000 to a smuggler to get him across the border, it sets off a few alarm bells. Sure, he says he’s just looking for work. But, don’t you suspect that his “work” would have involved a suicide belt or car bomb? I mean, it’s not as if he was going to make all that money back doing manual labor in a meat packing plant or picking oranges.

And is it not ironic we have this incredibly intrusive, overly bureaucratic security system that’s designed to prevent terrorists from flying into the country, but our border security is so lax that tens of thousands of illegals just walk across the border into our country every week? Yet today, more than four years out from 9/11, almost all the Democrats in the Senate and more than a few Republicans oppose getting tough on the border unless we can simultaneously find a way to allow “half of Mexico” to legally pour into our country so they can pick onions and do construction work on the cheap.

These Senators have priorities that are out of whack and it’s putting all the rest of us in danger. For the moment, they should forget about a guest worker program and a “path to citizenship” for the illegals that are already here. Instead they should build a wall, crack down on employers of illegals, and make sure we have the resources needed to patrol the border and enforce our laws. Then, once that’s done, and we can be reasonably certain that our border isn’t wide open for terrorists, drug runners, and illegals, then Congress can try to hammer out an agreement on the “undocumented workers” that are already here and a guest worker program.

That makes perfect sense and it’s the path the Senate should go down instead of playing petty political games while this country’s borders are unsecured. Everybody, on both sides of the political aisle, seems to agree that we need to get the border under control and increase immigration enforcement, so let’s get that done and leave the controversial aspects of immigration law to be debated later, after we no longer have to worry about terrorists making their way across our barely watched borders.

Endnotes:
  1. This: http://thomasjoscelyn.blogspot.com/2006/04/guantanamo-detainee-caught-at-border.html

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