Category Archives: Drug Cartels

Flaws, Ooops, Bad Address, Green Cards?

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How US green cards ended up being sent to the wrong people…..

A system implemented by US Customs and Immigration Services in 2012 failed on several levels, a report has concluded.

WaPo: Green cards sent to wrong places, even after change-of-address requests

A green card is like a green light for foreigners living in the United States.

Officially called “permanent resident” cards, they authorize holders to live and work here. Given the millions of people who reside here illegally, the documents are a valuable commodity among those who can’t get them through proper channels.

So when the government sends cards to the wrong address, it’s a big problem for those who should have them but don’t and for government officials who wince at the thought of the cards in the wrong hands.

Now comes word that since U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (CIS) installed its Electronic Immigration System (ELIS) in 2012, the number of cards going to the wrong places has only increased.

By how much, no one seems to know.

In this age of terror, this can be more serious than an employee working without proper papers.

A new report from the office of John Roth, the inspector general in the Department of Homeland Security, which includes CIS, says officials acknowledge there is “no accurate means of identifying the exact number of potentially hundreds of cards sent to incorrect addresses for cases processed in ELIS.”

As seems to be the case repeatedly in government lately, the blame goes to the computer systems, as if they are beyond the control of chief information officers. But that’s apparently the case at CIS.

The report says the cards were sent erroneously “due to a system limitation” that prevented humans from changing the addresses. Even when green-card holders requested a change of address, employees could not update the system.

“Further,” the report continued, “the system did not always accurately display address information, often eliminating or cutting off critical elements such as apartment numbers.”

The report said CIS officials told investigators the “only option for addressing the problem of incorrect addresses was to manually send out notices with instructions on how to mail the cards back.”

Not surprisingly, that strategy didn’t work.

When the Federal Insider asked the CIS public affairs office about the report’s green-card findings, it did not take long for the agency to respond with a lengthy statement from CIS Director León Rodríguez.

Unfortunately, his statement said nothing about green cards.

Rodríguez was critical of the report, however, saying it “does not fully recognize the extent of USCIS’ efforts to implement new technology and the extraordinary impact that these changes have had on the effectiveness of the system.” Several of the findings “do not reflect the drastically improved approaches put into place as we rebuilt our Electronic Immigration System,” he said, adding that the report did not “fully acknowledge” improvements made after an inspector general’s audit period, which ended in July.

Roth’s office sought comment on the report from CIS management before publication. The document said Rodríguez “did not understand our ‘report’s assertion that national security was impacted based on address changes by applicants.’ ”

Roth’s office did not understand that misunderstanding.

“It is intuitive,” the report said, “that sending official USCIS credentials to unauthorized individuals poses potential national security risks.”

It certainly is intuitive for Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

Not only is ELIS “years behind schedule and billions over budget, its continued shortcomings put our nation at risk,” he said. “With ISIS and other terrorist groups active around the world and committed to attacks on our country, our national security depends on our systems for screening visa and immigration applications working effectively.”

At a minimum, that means fixing a system that sends green cards to the wrong place even after a change of address was requested.

ICE Director Insensitive to Death, Enforcing Law

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Is there an agency director, secretary or anyone within the Obama administration that is sensitive to their failures of law and policy which results in death? How about Barack Obama himself or his national security council or even the Department of Homeland Security that is without dispute complicit in the death of innocents? This administration cant even determine what genocide means, they have lawyers looking at cases, law and evidence. Scary right? No worries, these matters are all ‘learning experiences’.

The Obama administration is remarkably slow to list organizations such as the Muslim Brotherhood as a terror organization if at all. Further, drug cartels which have created war zones in Mexico and at our southern border are NOT listed as terror organizations even with Congress calling on this to be done.

ICE Director Gives Shocking Excuse For Failure To Detain Killer Illegal Alien [VIDEO]

Ross/DC: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) director Sarah Saldana gave a baffling — and seemingly inaccurate — explanation during a Senate hearing on Tuesday for why federal immigration agents failed to detain an illegal alien who killed a 21-year-old Iowa woman in a drunken street race in Omaha in January.

ICE ignored a detainer request made by the Omaha police department last month for 19-year-old Eswin Mejia, Saldana said, because his victim, Sarah Root, had “not passed away” at the time the illegal alien drunk driver bailed out of jail.

That comment appears to be inaccurate since Root died hours after the Jan. 31 crash, in which Mejia was street racing with a .241 blood-alcohol level — three times the legal limit.

Mejia, a Honduran national, left jail on Feb. 5 after posting $5,000 bail. He is now on the run.

During Tuesday’s hearing, Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse asked Saldana why ICE did not respond to the Omaha police department’s request to detain Mejia after he posted his bail.

According to the Omaha World-Herald, Root’s father contacted an Omaha police accident investigator expressing his concern with a county judge’s Feb. 4 decision to set a $50,000 bond for Mejia. The illegal alien’s flight risk was also of concern for Root’s father. Mejia had a record for various traffic infractions and for failure to appear in court. ICE never detained him after those run-ins with the law.

The police investigator contacted ICE requesting an immigration hold for Mejia based on Root’s father’s concerns.

But ICE denied the initial request, and so the investigator and her lieutenant placed a call to an ICE supervisor. Their call was never returned, however, deputy Omaha police chief Dave Baker told the World-Herald.

Saldana gave conflicting excuses for why ICE failed to detain Mejia. During one part of her testimony she claimed that the agency did not have enough time to respond to the Omaha police department’s request. In another part, she said that ICE field officers should have used better judgement in exercising prosecutorial discretion.

“We tried to act,” Saldana told Sasse at one point. “But I believe there was a matter of hours between the time that we were contacted and the actual release.”

“It is very hard for us to get to every inquiry that is made by law enforcement,” she added.

Saldana said later in her testimony that ICE field officers can use prosecutorial discretion to detain illegal aliens if they believe that the person “presents a public safety threat.”

“In this case Sarah Root is dead,” Sasse pointed out. “What if someone kills a U.S. citizen? That doesn’t meet the threshold?”

Saldana responded with a confusing if not inaccurate answer.

“That was after the fact, sir,” she said.

“I understand that that person was injured and had not, when that four hour period of time, seriously injured, but had not passed away until later.”

It is unclear what Saldana meant by that statement. Root died on Jan. 31. Mejia bonded out of jail a week later.

ICE did not respond to a request for comment seeking clarification.

According to Sasse and various news reports, ICE spokesman Shawn Neudauer said last month that the case “did not meet ICE’s enforcement priorities” under President Obama’s Nov. 2014 enforcement priority policy because Mejia “had no prior significant misdemeanor or felony conviction record.”

ICE does not necessarily detain illegal aliens who have pending felony charges, apparently even in cases of felony vehicular homicide.

Obama’s enforcement priority executive action, which has come under intense criticism, places a priority on deporting illegal aliens with felony records, significant misdemeanor convictions, gang ties and those who pose terrorist threats.

He de-prioritized illegal aliens with convictions for drunk driving and lesser assault charges, including even domestic assault.

“It is a judgement that is being exercised by the person based on what they see at the time,” Saldana said of prosecutorial discretion, adding that in the Root case it “could have been exercised a different way.”

“That’s us looking back,” she continued. “I want to look forward so that we don’t have that situation arise again.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Speaker Ryan’s Resolution on Defining Power

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Pathetic that this has to be done…but it is interesting especially considering what the House has for future legislative action. One significant item where a deadline is looming is the budget and the deportation issue.

Paul Ryan: Resolution on Obama deportation amnesty brief coming Thursday
House Speaker Paul D. Ryan says he’s bringing a resolution to the House floor on Thursday authorizing him to file a brief in the ongoing legal dispute over President Obama’s deportation amnesties.

“If we are going to maintain the founding principle of being a self-governing people, if we’re going to maintain the founding principle of government by consent of the governed, the legislative branch of government needs to be the one writing the laws — not the executive branch,” Mr. Ryan said Tuesday.

Politico: The House Freedom Caucus will oppose a $1.07 trillion budget backed by Republican leaders, likely assuring that the fiscal package will fail if put up for a vote on the House floor.

Leaders of the conservative group said Monday night that they plan to vote against the package because it does not go far enough to cut spending. It’s a crippling blow for GOP leaders, who repeatedly said passing a budget was a major goal for 2016.

“The Freedom Caucus is officially a no,” said Idaho Rep. Raul Labrador. “We’ve been talking to leadership for several weeks, giving them the opportunity to make some good pitches to us, and so far everything we have heard has been less than stellar.”

Budget Committee Chairman Tom Price of Georgia and Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) have labored to gain the support of the far-right caucus over the last six weeks but the top-line budget numbers are still too high to pass conservative muster.

Price plans to hold a markup on the budget Wednesday.

Members of the Freedom Caucus have pushed for $30 billion in immediate budget cuts in exchange for their support. Freedom Caucus Chairman Jim Jordan, an Ohio Republican, said Monday that the group has offered proposals to Ryan and Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) that could bring the hardliners on board but those offers were rejected.

Here is the hearing calendar for March.

Speaker Ryan Just Introduced His First Resolution. Here’s Why.

On Monday, Speaker Ryan introduced a resolution that launches an unprecedented defense of Congress’s Article I powers under our Constitution. Read H. Res. 639.

Here’s how he described the resolution—his first as Speaker—at a press conference today:

“We are the branch of government that is closest to the people. We are defending the people not only against executive overreach. We are defending the people of this country against a growing branch of unelected bureaucrats who are writing our laws.

“There is a problem in this country. . . . We have unelected bureaucrats who are writing our laws. That means we the people, through our elected representatives, are not the final arbiters or drafters of the legislation that we have to live under.

“This is very important. If we’re going to maintain the founding principle of being a self-governing people, if we’re going to maintain the founding principle of government by consent of the governed, the legislative branch of government needs to be the one writing the laws—not the executive branch. . . .

“This is why we’re filing an amicus brief—to defend our Article One powers. . . . We’re going to defend Article One, because we believe passionately in the principle of being a self-governing people, of government by consent of the governed, of putting back in the box this growing fourth branch of government that is becoming more and more and more unaccountable to the people of this country. By restoring the separation of powers, we can reclaim these ideals.”

Here’s what you need to know about H. Res. 639, which the House is scheduled to take up on Thursday:

  • Article I vs. Article II. In United States v. Texas, the Supreme Court asked whether the president’s executive amnesty violates the president’s duties under Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed”? This is a question the House is uniquely qualified to answer: under Article I, “all legislative powers” are vested in Congress. Neither the president nor unelected bureaucrats are permitted to write laws. Only Congress is.
  • The resolution. H. Res. 639 authorizes Speaker Ryan to file a brief on behalf of the whole House defending Congress’s Article I powers. The decision to file these briefs is usually made by the House’s Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group, not the full body. This is the first time any Speaker has taken this step.  Given that this overreach is a direct attack on Congress’s Article I powers, it is essential for the institution to respond as a whole.
  • Next steps. Should the House pass this resolution, outside counsel will draft a brief and ask the Supreme Court for time during oral argument. In addition, Republicans will advance ideas to restore the separation of powers and the Constitution as part of a bold and specific policy agenda.

To cap it off….the other matter with regard to immigration are the ranchers. They are making demands, and should.

‘Almost America’: Ranchers in New Mexico Demand That the Federal Government Provide Protection as Chaos Takes Over the Border Region

More than 700 people showed up to a rally this week at a high school auditorium in Animas, New Mexico, population 237. Speakers stood at a podium decorated with a sign emblazoned with the phrase “A Stolen Life” and a photo of Robert Krentz, murdered by an illegal alien on his nearby ranch in 2010, a crime that remains unsolved.


As their region transforms into a war zone, ranchers along the New Mexico border are fed up with the indifference that Washington has shown to their plight. The recent carjacking and kidnapping of a ranch hand by drug-smuggling thugs served as the latest event to rattle this group of Americans. Exasperated with being ignored, the group resorted to prayer, pleading for some type of intervention to alleviate the attack on their existence.
Amid cries of “walk the border” and “come down here,” the kidnapped ranch hand’s employer, Tricia Elbrock, told the crowd “We got problems here. They don’t want it known. They don’t want people to know.” She spoke about increased insurance premiums as the border descends into lawlessness along with her inability to keep her workers safe under federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration mandates.
Frank Krentz, son of murder victim Robert Krentz, told the crowd a familiar tale: he has had 200 head of cattle and dozens of vehicles stolen and brought into Mexico and his home is routinely ransacked. When he calls his representatives in Washington, they tell him to move, even though his family has been working this land for five generations.
The problem is so out of hand that Loren Cushman, local school superintendent, said his district sometimes has to delay school dismissals due to Border Patrol incidents on local roads and highways. “What are my students learning from people who are allowed to act in a completely lawless nature, with no repercussion or punishment?” he said.
The nature of scofflaws who cross the border is also changing. The number “of people in the area that are smuggling people and drugs seems to be increasing,” said Lawrence Hurt, whose ranch runs for almost 30 miles along the border. “We see a lot less of the people who are looking for a job.”


Susan Tully, national field director at FAIR, attended the rally to support the organizers, the New Mexico Cattle Grower’s Association, with whom she has worked for many years to help get their voices heard.
“I am here in solidarity with the ranchers and people of this area, many of whom are our members and associates,” said Tully. “We discussed how FAIR can help them amplify their call for Washington to get engaged in border enforcement that is meaningful and meets the needs of the people.”
Veterinarian Gary Thrasher expressed concern over the spread of Chagas disease, Dengue fever and bovine tuberculosis, which can be passed from animal to human and vice versa, all of which are being brought into the country by illegal aliens who are unscreened by health officials.
The Border Patrol came under fire for pulling back their agents to the main highway, I-10, creating a buffer zone between the thoroughfare and the border, which can be anywhere from 10 to 60 miles inside U.S. territory. The ranchers call this “Almost America.”
The local Border Patrol station at Lordsburg station is understaffed, moreover, and illegal migrants and criminals know that it is easier to cross into New Mexico than other border areas. Attendees urged officials to patrol on horseback and helicopter, the most effective way to cover this rugged terrain.
Sue Krentz, widow of murder victim Robert Krentz, implored the federal government to “secure the border. We’re demanding the right to live free and safe on our own land and in our own homes. Everything is relative – until it’s your relative.”

 

Obama, He Freed Them and They Kill

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How about next we pass a law in Congress, that it is against the law not to follow and apply the law? Imagine the government savings….and especially the lives saved….

Free to Kill: 124 Criminal Aliens Released By Obama Policies Charged with Homicide Since 2010

Vaughn, CIS: In response to congressional inquiries, ICE has released information on some of the criminal aliens who have been released by the agency since 2010. Specifically, ICE provided information on aliens who were charged with homicides after being released and aliens who were released multiple times by ICE.

The criminal aliens released by ICE in these years — who had already been convicted of thousands of crimes — are responsible for a significant crime spree in American communities, including 124 aliens charged with 135 new homicides. Inexplicably, ICE is choosing to release some criminal aliens multiple times.

Only a tiny percentage of the released criminals have been removed — most receive the most generous forms of due process available, and are allowed to remain at large, without supervision, while they await drawn-out immigration hearings. They are permitted to take advantage of this inefficient processing even though they are more likely to re-offend than they are to be granted legal status.

There is a human cost to the Obama administration’s careless catch and release policies for criminal aliens, euphemistically known as “prioritization”. These policies have led to 124 new homicides since 2010, and thousands of other crimes that harm citizens and degrade the quality of life in American communities.

124 Aliens Charged With Homicide After Release Since 2010

A total of 121 criminal aliens who were freed by ICE over the five-year period between 2010 and 2014 were subsequently charged with homicide-related crimes within that time frame. (Three more were charged in 2015; see below.) These 121 accused murderers were associated with 250 different communities in the United States, with the most clustered in California, New York and Texas.

 

Source: ICE information provided to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee
View Image of Map

Some aliens had multiple zip codes associated with them in ICE’s system, so the records include more zip codes than the 121 individual criminal aliens charged through 2014. (Three more were charged in 2015; ICE did not provide their zip codes.)

These aliens were charged with a total of 135 homicide-related crimes after release. Two of them had homicide-related convictions even before they were released.

These aliens had 464 criminal convictions prior to release by ICE, ranging from drug crimes to DUI and other driving offenses to larceny and theft.

Another three aliens who were released by ICE during that time were charged with homicides during the first 10 months of FY2015, bring the total number of criminals aliens released by ICE who subsequently were charged with homicide to 124.

This tally does not include aliens who were released by sanctuary jurisdictions, nor those aliens that were released by local law enforcement agencies after ICE declined to take them into custody due to Obama administration prioritization policies. This list includes only those aliens that ICE arrested and then released.

The names of the criminal aliens were redacted by the Judiciary Committee, but the list presumably includes murderers like Apolinar Altamirano, an illegal alien who was arrested by ICE in 2013 following his conviction on local charges involving a burglary and abduction, but who was released on a $10,000 bond and permitted to remain free and elect to have deportation proceedings that would take years to complete. In January 2015 Altamirano shot and killed 21-year-old Grant Ronnebeck while he was working at a convenience store where Altamirano had come to buy cigarettes.

Aliens Released By ICE on Multiple Occasions Since 2013 Commit Hundreds of New Crimes

ICE reported that there are 156 criminal aliens who were released at least twice by ICE since 2013. Between them, these criminals had 1,776 convictions before their first release in 2013, with burglary, larceny, and drug possession listed most frequently.

The vast majority (124) of these criminal aliens were released in California. In addition, 16 were released in Arizona, six in Texas, three in Florida, two in Georgia, and one each in North Carolina, Massachusetts, Wisconsin, Washington, and Oregon.

These criminal aliens racked up a total of 243 additional convictions after being freed by ICE. The largest number (24) were for drunk or drugged driving, but they also included drug offenses, burglary, theft and larceny, and sex offenses.

ICE further disclosed that 47 of the recidivist aliens who were released at least twice had since been charged with an additional 106 crimes since their most recent release. So far, 20 have been convicted of crimes including burglary, dangerous drugs, DUI, fraud, and assault on a police officer.

Why Were They Released?

ICE has previously disclosed that 75 percent of the homicidal criminal aliens were released due to court orders, including the so-called Zadvydas cases, in which the alien’s home country would not take them back. The rest were released by ICE’s choice.

Of the 156 recidivists that ICE released at least twice, fewer than half (67) were released because their home country would not take them back, 16 were released on bond by an immigration judge, and 73 were released by ICE’s choice. ICE says it tried to contest only one of the releases ordered by an immigration judge — meaning that ICE essentially consented to more than half of these releases.

Of the 156, a total of 88 were released under “supervision”, 40 were released on bond, and 28 were released on an order of recognizance (without supervision).

In a separate communication, ICE provided a list of the countries that currently are uncooperative in accepting their deported citizens: Afghanistan, Algeria, Burundi, Cape Verde, China, Cuba, Eritrea, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, India, Iran, Iraq, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Sudan, and Zimbabwe.

Criminal Aliens Released in 2014 Were Convicted of 2,560 New Crimes

In 2014, ICE released a total of 30,558 criminal aliens from its custody. These aliens had already been convicted of 92,347 crimes before they were released by ICE.

As of July 25, 2015, a total of 1,895 aliens have been charged with a crime after being freed by ICE. As of that date, 1,607 aliens had been convicted of a crime after being freed by ICE. The total number of new crimes for which these aliens were convicted after ICE released them was 2,560.

These 2,560 new crimes by aliens ICE released instead of deported in 2014 include: 298 dangerous drug offenses, 185 assaults, 40 weapons offenses, 28 sex offenses, 10 sex assaults, four kidnappings, two arsons, and one homicide. There were 1,044 traffic offenses included in the list.

Only 3 percent of the Criminal Aliens Released in 2014 Have Been Removed

As of July 25, 2015, only 974 (3 percent) of the 30,558 criminal aliens freed by ICE in 2014 have been removed. Presumably some of these aliens are again incarcerated or in ICE custody following conviction for the 2,560 new crimes after their release by ICE.

However, ICE reports that 28,017 still had a pending immigration case as of July 25, 2015, suggesting that many of these released criminal aliens will remain here for some time under Obama administration policies that allow them to elect for drawn-out immigration court proceedings rather than accelerated forms of due process and removal.

In addition, there were 1,567 of these released criminal aliens who have been allowed to stay in the United States.

ICE’s full response to the Judiciary Committee’s inquiries can be found here.

Improved Reporting on Immigration Status of Criminals Needed

The public should not have to rely on members of Congress to demand information from federal immigration agencies about criminal aliens. Immigration status should be reported on a routine basis by all law enforcement agencies, so that federal authorities can respond appropriately when an alien is arrested, and so that the public can determine the true public safety impact of immigration policy. Legislation has been introduced by Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) that would remedy this problem.

Evidence: Middle East Money in Arizona

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Arizona Atty. Gen. Finds Money Trail Between Middle East, Mexican Smugglers

Months after six Middle Eastern men who entered the U.S. illegally through Mexico were arrested in Arizona state authorities have uncovered an extensive money trail between the Middle East and Mexico. This includes more than a dozen wire transfers sent from the Middle East to known Mexican smugglers in at least two different regions of the Latin American nation, according to the Arizona Attorney General’s Office.

A report issued by the AG exposes the disturbing money trail between Mexico and terrorist nations in the Middle East as well as evidence of smuggling routes tying the region to America’s southern border. An excerpt of the AG’s findings was obtained by a local media outlet that published it this week. It states that the Mexican city of Tapachula, a known human smuggling hub located near the Guatemalan border in the state of Chiapas, was the top destination of Middle Eastern money transfers. Nogales, which is situated adjacent to the Arizona border, is the second destination, the investigation found. “Agents conducted a comprehensive geographic analysis of possible terrorist related transactions and/or money transfers involving human smuggling networks,” the state report says.

Officials launched the probe shortly after six men—one from Afghanistan, five from Pakistan—were arrested in Patagonia, a quaint ranch town that sits 20 miles north of Nogales, on November 17. Judicial Watch investigated the matter as part of an ongoing probe on the dire national security issues created by the famously porous southern border. Special Agent Kurt Remus in the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) Phoenix headquarters told JW that the agency’s Joint Terrorism Task Forces vetted and interviewed the six men and determined that there were “no obvious signs of terrorism” so they were returned to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody.

But a few days later, in a story reported exclusively by JW, five young Middle Eastern men were apprehended in the nearby Arizona town of Amado, which is located about 30 miles from the Mexican border. Two of the Middle Eastern men were carrying stainless steel cylinders in backpacks, law enforcement and other sources told JW, alarming Border Patrol officials enough to call the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for backup. Only three of the men’s names were entered in the Border Patrol’s E3 reporting system, which is used by the agency to track apprehensions, detention hearings and removals of illegal immigrants. E3 also collects and transmits biographic and biometric data including fingerprints for identification and verification of individuals encountered at the border. The other two men were listed as “unknown subjects,” which is unheard of, according to a JW federal law enforcement source. “In all my years I’ve never seen that before,” a veteran federal law enforcement agent told JW.

The money trail exposed by Arizona officials in the aftermath of these two major incidents is extremely troublesome. The AG’s Financial Crimes Task Force quickly identified suspicious wire transfers sent from Middle Eastern and African nations by people with Middle Eastern names to Mexico. In 2015, one human smuggler in Mexico received 70 money transfers from 69 senders, the task force found. “All of the 69 sender names appeared to be of Middle Eastern origin,” the AG writes in its report. This seems to confirm JW’s reporting in the last few years on the dangerous alliance between Mexican smugglers and Middle Eastern extremists who want to attack the U.S.

Last summer JW broke a story about a Mexican drug cartel operation that smuggles foreigners from countries with terrorist links into a small Texas rural town near El Paso. They use remote farm roads—rather than interstates—to elude the Border Patrol and other law enforcement barriers, according to sources on both sides of the Mexico-U.S. border. The foreigners are then transported to stash areas in Acala, a rural crossroads located around 54 miles from El Paso on a state road – Highway 20. In 2015 JW also reported that the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) is operating camps near the U.S. border in areas known as Anapra and Puerto Palomas west of Ciudad Juárez in the Mexican state of Chihuahua. That information came from high-level sources just months after JW exposed an ISIS plot orchestrated from Ciudad Juárez to attack the U.S. with car bombs or other vehicle borne improvised explosive devices (VBIED). As a result of JW’s reporting Ft. Bliss, the U.S. Army base in El Paso, increased security. The threat was imminent enough to place agents across a number of Homeland Security, Justice and Defense agencies on alert. As far back as 2014 JW reported that four ISIS terrorists were arrested by federal authorities and the Texas Department of Public Safety in McAllen and Pharr.

****

According to a 2010 report, “Close to home: Hezbollah terrorists are plotting right on the U.S. border,” which appeared in the NY Daily News:

Mexican authorities have rolled up a Hezbollah network being built in Tijuana … closer to American homes than the terrorist hideouts in the Bekaa Valley are to Israel. Its goal, according to a Kuwaiti newspaper that reported on the investigation: to strike targets in Israel and the West. Over the years, Hezbollah—rich with Iranian oil money and narcocash—has generated revenue by cozying up with Mexican cartels to smuggle drugs and people into theU.S. In this, it has shadowed the terrorist-sponsoring regime in Tehran, which has been forging close ties with Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, who in turn supports the narcoterrorist organization FARC, which wreaks all kinds of havoc throughout the region.

Another 2010 article appearing in the Washington Times asserts that, “with fresh evidence of Hezbollah activity just south of the border [in Mexico], and numerous reports of Muslims from various countries posing as Mexicans and crossing into the United States from Mexico, our porous southern border is a national security nightmare waiting to happen.” This is in keeping with a recent study done by Georgetown University, which revealed that the number of immigrants from Lebanon and Syria living in Mexico exceeds 200,000. Syria, along with Iran, is one of Hezbollah’s strongest financial and political supporters, and Lebanon is the immigrants’ country of origin. Just like only 19 jihadists were necessary to cause the devastation of September 11, 2001, only a handful of these 200,000 are necessary to wreak havoc north of the border.

A jihadist cell in Mexico was recently found to have a weapons cache of 100 M-16 assault rifles, 100 AR-15 rifles, 2,500 hand grenades, C4 explosives and antitank munitions. The weapons, it turned out, had been smuggled by Muslims from Iraq. According to this report, “obvious concerns have arisen concerning Hezbollah’s presence in Mexico and possible ties to Mexican drug trafficking organizations (DTO’s) operating along the U.S.-Mexico border.”

*** Chicago?

TheBlaze: The city may be nearly 2,000 miles from Mexico, but the country’s drug cartels are so deeply embedded in Chicago that local and federal law enforcement are forced to operate as if they are “on the border,” according to Jack Riley, special agent in charge for the Chicago Field Division of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

 

Because of Chicago’s location in the heart of the United States, its large Mexican population and its abundance of street gang activity, drug cartels have designated the city as one of its main hubs of operation in America, Riley told TheBlaze in an exclusive interview. Inevitably, the increasing presence of cartels has also contributed to the Windy City’s skyrocketing violent crime rates, the DEA boss revealed.

“My opinion is, right now, a number of the Mexican cartels are probably the most organized, well-funded, vicious criminal organizations that we’ve ever seen,” said Riley.

Right now, at least three major Mexican cartels are fighting for control of billions of dollars worth of marijuana, cocaine and heroin in Chicago. That includes the ruthless Zetas and the powerful Sinaloa cartel, run by Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, arguably the most wanted man in North America, and perhaps the entire world.

However, the influence of drug cartels is seemingly overlooked repeatedly by the media when it reports on Chicago’s crime rate and rampant drug-related violence.