{"id":23545,"date":"2020-08-27T06:22:28","date_gmt":"2020-08-27T10:22:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/?p=23545"},"modified":"2020-08-27T06:22:30","modified_gmt":"2020-08-27T10:22:30","slug":"border-security-terrorist-threats-continue-immigrationreform-com","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/2020\/08\/27\/border-security-terrorist-threats-continue-immigrationreform-com\/","title":{"rendered":"Don\u2019t Sweep Special Interest Aliens Under the Rug"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The New York Times hasn\u2019t tripped over any prayer rugs in Mexico, leading the integrity-impugned paper to cast doubt<\/a> on a 2019 Washington Examiner report<\/a> citing border ranchers in New Mexico who claim to have seen these abandoned religious artifacts. But here\u2019s a news flash: Migrants from terrorist-connected countries continue to arrive at America\u2019s southern border.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

U.S. Border Patrol agents \u201croutinely encounter SIAs [Special Interest Aliens] at the border,\u201d according to a report<\/a> written by the staff of the House Homeland Security Committee in 2018. That year, 630 Bangladeshi nationals were arrested trying to enter the U.S. illegally through Laredo, Texas, alone. That was a 300 percent increase from 2017.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since 2007, U.S. authorities have apprehended 45,000 SIAs<\/a> by land, sea and air. The Department of Homeland Security says the number of terror watch-listed individuals encountered at the southern border has risen in the last two years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An SIA, in DHS parlance, is\na \u201cnon-U.S. person who potentially poses a national security risk to the United\nStates or its interests.\u201d While cautioning that not all SIAs are \u2018terrorists,\u2019\nDHS noted, \u201cThe travel and behavior of such individuals indicates a possible\nnexus to nefarious activity, including terrorism, and necessitates heightened\nscreening and further investigation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unfortunately, mainstream media outlets remain remarkably incurious about the presence and potential threats posed by SIAs. Without conducting a serious investigation, or even consulting available government reports, The Times<\/a> seized on a presidential tweet about Islamic \u201cprayer rugs\u201d at the border to brand as \u201cbaseless\u201d an assertion that individuals with terrorist ties were making their way through Mexico to the U.S.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s unbelievable that\nwe\u2019re still stuck on prayer rugs when there are [SIAs] all over the place. This\nconstant denialism is making the county more vulnerable,\u201d says Todd Bensman, an\nanalyst with the Center for Immigration Studies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Author of a forthcoming\nbook, \u201cAmerica\u2019s Covert Border War,\u201d Bensman says national security risks are\n\u201celevated,\u201d prayer rugs or not. \u201cFor every story that is debunked, there are\nmany more that are confirmed,\u201d said Bensman, who interviewed scores of SIAs and\nother illegal border crossers while working as a journalist in Texas and,\nlater, with the Texas Department of Public Safety. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

DHS, in its report to\nCongress, says SIA apprehensions have increased. Among the tens of thousands of\nSIAs who landed in Panama and Colombia since 2014, \u201cnearly all were headed to\nthe United States and originated from the Middle East, Asia and\nAfrica\u2014including Syria, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Somalia, Bangladesh, India,\nEritrea and many others,\u201d the agency stated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Europe learned from a string of violent terrorist attacks<\/a> in recent years, a handful of malicious migrants embedded among millions of asylum-seekers, economic migrants and those fleeing conflicts in the Mideast, Africa and Asia can wreak deadly havoc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last month, two U.S. courts<\/a> opened the door to more manipulation of the asylum process here. Striking down an administration rule requiring migrants traversing Central America to request asylum in the countries they pass through, the courts cleared the way for more SIAs to press their claims at the border. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The New York Times hasn\u2019t tripped over any prayer rugs in Mexico, leading the integrity-impugned paper to cast doubt on a 2019 Washington Examiner report citing border ranchers in New Mexico who claim to have seen these abandoned religious artifacts. But here\u2019s a news flash: Migrants from terrorist-connected countries continue to arrive at America\u2019s southern<\/p>\n

Read More<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":22233,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[5],"tags":[140,1524,9678,732],"yst_prominent_words":[7051,2043,2298,2285,2816,2048,2188,2016,2743,9676,9674,2295,9677,2296,9675,3178,2862,2167,1939,1977],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23545"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23545"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23545\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23546,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23545\/revisions\/23546"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22233"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23545"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=23545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}