Feds issue terror watch for Somalis coming across the border—too little too late

Blulitespecial spotted this story today.   Fox News is reporting that Somalis suspected of being linked to Al-Shabaab are coming across America’s porous borders and possibly forming sleeper cells—gee no kidding!    We have been writing about this since 2008 because they are likely blending into the large Somali refugee populations in major cities.   Only recently reader Khadra, who says she is a Somali born in the US, warned us too (be sure to read comments).

From Fox News:

The Department of Homeland Security is alerting Texas authorities to be on the lookout for a suspected member of the Somalia-based Al Shabaab terrorist group who might be attempting to travel to the U.S. through Mexico, a security expert who has seen the memo tells FOXNews.com.

The warning follows an indictment unsealed this month in Texas federal court that accuses a Somali man in Texas of running a “large-scale smuggling enterprise” responsible for bringing hundreds of Somalis from Brazil through South America and eventually across the Mexican border. Many of the illegal immigrants, who court records say were given fake IDs, are alleged to have ties to other now-defunct Somalian terror organizations that have merged with active organizations like Al Shabaab, al-Barakat and Al-Ittihad Al-Islami.

In 2008, the U.S. government designated Al Shabaab a terrorist organization. Al Shabaab has said its priority is to impose Sharia, or Islamic law, on Somalia; the group has aligned itself with Al Qaeda and has made statements about its intent to harm the United States.

[….]

J. Peter Pham, senior fellow and director of the Africa Project at the National Committee on American Foreign Policy, said that for the past ten years there’s been suspicion by U.S. law enforcement that drug cartels could align with international terrorist organizations to bring would-be-jihadists into the U.S.

That kind of collaboration is already being seen in Africa, said Dr. Walid Phares, director of the Future Terrorism Project at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.

Too little too late—they are already here.  See also the news about the Somali smuggler trial in Virginia last week.

Pham says the DHS alert comes too late. “They’re just covering themselves for the fact that DHS has been failing to date to deal effectively with this,” he said. “They’re already here.”

Michael Weinstein, a political science professor at Purdue University and an expert on Somalia, said, “In the past year, it’s become obvious that there’s a spillover into the United States of the transnational revolutionaries in Somalia.”

“It’s something that certainly has to be watched, but I don’t think it’s an imminent threat,” he said. “This has to be put in context with people smuggling — everybody and their brother is getting into the United States through Mexico; I read last week that some Chinese were crossing, it’s just a big market.”

Pham disagrees. “The real danger is ‘something along the lines of jihadist version of ‘find a classmate,’ he said, referring to Al Shabaab’s potential to set up sleeper cells in the U.S. “Most of them rely on personal referral and association. That type of social networking is not beyond their capabilities.”

Pham says the DHS alert is too little, too late.

Read it all.

If the Somali issue explodes, the Open Borders movement is dead.

For new readers, more Somalis are already on the way (in addition to the illegal ones cited above):

The US State Department has admitted over 80,000 Somali refugees to the US (this linked post continues to be one of the most widely read posts we have ever written) in the last 25 years and then in 2008 had to suspend family reunification because widespread immigration fraud was revealed through DNA testing.  That specific program has not yet been reopened (that we know of), but will be soon.

Nevertheless, thousands of Somali Muslims continue to be resettled by the State Department as I write this. We recently learned that we will be taking 6000 Somalis this year from one camp in Uganda and as many as 11,000-13,000 total from around the world.

Through the Refugee Resettlement program alone 2141 legal Somalis have already arrived in this fiscal year (2010) as of April 30th with an unknown number arriving through other legal programs and  illegally across both our borders.

Reminder! The Feds have set up a crime tips hotline for Somalis, here.   Any newly arrived men from Africa in your town or city, maybe you should let the authorities know.

Senators Leahy and Sessions scuffle over refugee program expansion bill

The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) has an interesting piece in its legislative updates for the week about the hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee on Leahy’s bill (we mentioned it here)  that would, among other things, make it easier for asylum seekers to enter the US.

Here is what FAIR says:

During last week’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Ranking Member Senator Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) clashed with Chairman Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Ver.) regarding his refugee bill. Entitled the “Refugee Protection Act of 2010” (S. 3113), Leahy’s bill seeks to amend the current process that aliens must follow in order to receive asylum or refugee status.

Despite the fact that the U.S. currently admits more refugees annually than all other nations combined, Leahy opened the hearing by charging that U.S. law does not do enough to welcome refugees. Leahy argued his bill was necessary to “restore our Nation as a beacon of hope for those who suffer from persecution around the world.” (Hearing, May 19, 2010; See also Leahy’s Written Statement, May 19, 2010). In contrast, Sessions said in his opening statement that he was “proud to live in a nation that is so welcoming of those who are facing persecution” and that “we need to be diligent in our analysis of any proposal that seeks to change the law by which people are admitted into the United States.” (Hearing, May 19, 2010).

Sessions then identified several provisions of Leahy’s bill that he deemed to be “problematic.” These included:

Go to FAIR and read the rest.  It is very good.   I was especially interested in the testimony of a former refugee who was alarmed by the lax protection from terrorism the bill affords.

Completely off topic: For a laugh watch this campaign ad for an opponent of Leahy’s in Vermont.