Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Al Qaeda Confessions Make the Case for Immigration & Border Controls

Via CT Blog (by Mike Cutler) -

The wheels of justice sometimes turn slowly but in most instances, inexorably. Finally the terrorist behind the bombing of the USS Cole and other horrific terrorist attacks has confessed to his role in several terrorist attacks. Walid Muhammad bin Attash, also known as Tawfiq bin Attash, has also confessed to having masterminded the nearly simultaneous attacks on the United States embassies at Kenya and Tanzania that resulted in the slaughter of more than 200 people and the wounding of many other victims.

What needs to be considered is that in order to create the wholesale destruction of the embassies and the serious damage to the USS Cole, bin Attash not only needed to obtain explosives, he needed to obtain false travel documents for his operatives in order to facilitate their travel in preparation for the attacks. Bin Attash also stated that he spent a year and a half preparing for the attack and referred to those who participated in the attack has the "cell." He noted that he provided members of the cell with false documents and also came up with stamps (presumably in their passports) and visas to facilitate their international travel. Clearly he, himself, traveled across international borders as he prepared the deadly attacks in which he was in charge. International travel is absolutely an intrinsic component to a terrorist attack. This should be a common-sense concept, but where the open borders advocates are concerned, common sense has been tossed in the trash can, because they do not want to hear anything that would deter or otherwise hamper their grandiose plans to virtually remove our nation's borders.

If our nation's leaders refuse to secure our nation's borders, they cannot protect our nation from international terrorists who would enter our country to attack our country. The effective enforcement and administration of our nation's immigration laws have to be considered a component of national security. The politicians often repeat slogans that they hope will ultimately gain "traction" if they repeat it often enough. A good example of such a phrase is that intelligence can prevent terrorism but that immigration has nothing to do with terrorism! Of course they don't provide a plan for obtaining effective intelligence, it is just that they will look for any supposed solution to protecting our country just as long as it does not involve securing our borders and making certain that the immigration benefits program has meaningful integrity. I can tell you from experience that valuable intelligence is often provided by informants. If you are concerned about terrorists who may have embedded themselves in our country creating a so-called "sleeper cell," then you need to cultivate informants in the United States who can act as the eyes and ears of law enforcement agents who are conducting investigations of terrorists and other criminals. Such informants can be absolutely essential in uncovering terror cells and criminal organizations. The easiest way to cultivate informants is to arrest an individual for violating various laws and offering him (her) and opportunity to avoid prosecution or have potential criminal charges reduced in exchange for the cooperation of this individual. The greater the cooperation and the higher the quality of the information, the greater are the rewards that are offered to the cooperating individual. The use of immigration benefits can also be a very attractive carrot in some situations. In fact, having spent roughly half of my career working closely with other law enforcement agencies, I can tell you from first-hand experience that the immigration component can be absolutely vital in convincing a bad guy to cooperate with law enforcement.

Meanwhile, at present, newly hired special agents at ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) who are being trained at the academy are not getting foreign language training and they are not receiving critical training in the identification of counterfeit, altered or otherwise bogus identity documents! Identity documents and supporting documents such as birth certificates, marriage licenses and other such documents are absolutely vital to the effective enforcement of the immigration laws and the accurate adjudication of applications for a wide variety of immigration benefits.

The Guest Worker Amnesty Program that are so strongly being advocated by President Bush, Senators McCain, Kennedy, Reid, and all of the usual suspects would represent a major gift to terrorists who want to create false identities for themselves to better hide in plain sight and embed themselves in our country as they put together the next terrorist attack.

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