The Argument for Terminating Passport/Visa Waiver Program

Posted on August 20, 2015August 20, 2015 by Denise Simon

Other countries are taking a hardline stance against immigration and those foreigners seeking refuge. Failed nations are to blame when advanced countries do little to control crime, terror insurgencies and financial tailspins. The United States is experiencing historic influxes of people seeking asylum, refuge and otherwise aliens from worldwide locations. However, the United States is not alone when it comes to failed international relations and policy but Europe is as well, where a larger debate on the matter is required.

Europe migrant crisis: Surge in numbers at EU borders

BBC: The number of migrants at the EU’s borders reached a record high of 107,500 in July, officials say, as a sharp surge in expected asylum requests was reported in Germany.

Germany has seen a wave of migration from Syria and the Balkans, and now says it could receive as many as 750,000 asylum seekers this year.

The EU has been struggling to cope with migrant arrivals in recent months.

France and the UK say they will sign a deal to tackle the crisis in Calais.

Over the summer, thousands of migrants have sought to get to the UK through the Channel Tunnel from makeshift camps around the northern French city.

France’s Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve and his British counterpart, Theresa May, say they will sign a deal there on Thursday to strengthen their countries’ co-operation on security, the fight against criminal smugglers, human traffickers, and clandestine immigration.

In early August, the UK pledged to add €10m (£7m) to a fund established in September 2014 to secure the port of Calais, and initially endowed with €15m over three years.

‘Third consecutive record’

EU border agency Frontex said the number of migrants surpassed the 100,000 mark in a single month for the first time since it had begun keeping records in 2008.

The Warsaw-based agency said in a statement that the figure of 107,500 migrants for July was the “third consecutive monthly record, jumping well past the previous high of more than 70,000 reached in June”.

The German government had earlier forecast that 450,000 asylum seekers could arrive in 2015, but is now set to increase that to 650,000 or higher.

UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres said more countries in Europe should share the burden.

“It is unsustainable in the long run that only two EU countries, Germany and Sweden, take in the majority of refugees,” he told German daily Die Welt.

Hungary’s southern border marks the edge of the EU’s Schengen zone of passport-free travel and is thus a target for migrants seeking to enter the EU.

Its government has said it will send thousands of police officers to its southern border with Serbia in its latest step to stem the flow of migrants. More here.

SAN DIEGO (AP) — Walking into Mexico at the nation’s busiest border crossing with the United States is no longer an uninterrupted stroll for foreigners.

Starting late Wednesday, pedestrians going to Tijuana from San Diego at the San Ysidro crossing must choose between a line for Mexicans who get waved through, and a line for foreigners who must show a passport, fill out a form and — if staying more than a week — pay 322 pesos, or roughly $20, for a six-month permit.

About a dozen foreigners stood in line Wednesday night, directed by English-speaking agents to six inspection booths where they got passports stamped. It took about 10 minutes from start to finish.

Travelers have long followed similar protocol at Mexican airports, but the new border procedure marks a big change at land crossings that weren’t designed to question everyone. Pedestrians and motorists have generally entered Mexico unencumbered along the 1,954-mile border with the United States.

“This is about putting our house in order,” said Rodulfo Figueroa, Mexico’s top immigration official in Baja California state, which includes Tijuana.

The changes, which have been in the works for years, come as Donald Trump has surged to the top of the Republican field in the U.S. presidential race. He has insisted that Mexico sends criminals to the U.S. and pledges to build a border wall at Mexico’s expense.

For Mexico, it is a step toward closing an escape route for American criminals who disappear in Mexico. Border inspectors will tap into international criminal databases. Motorists will see no change, and if lines get too long, officials will also wave pedestrians through.

More than 120 Americans expelled from Mexico this year while living in Baja California had arrest warrants in the U.S., according to Figueroa, delegate of the National Migration Institute. Some ordered to leave last year were on the FBI’s most-wanted list.

But authorities say benefits extend beyond stopping unwanted visitors. A recent hurricane stranded twice as many Americans in Cabo San Lucas than U.S. authorities thought were there, Figueroa said, and registering as a foreigner would have made it easier to identify those who needed help.

Figueroa said Mexico can initially process about 1,000 foreigners daily, up from about 50 currently.

“If the line becomes clogged up, we will just let everybody through,” Figueroa said. “If we can’t check everybody, we won’t.”

Figueroa said San Ysidro is believed to be the first U.S. land crossing to have a separate line for foreigners to show passports and that it will serve as a model for others as they are upgraded. Aurora Vega, a spokeswoman for the National Migration Institute, referred questions to other departments. Officials at the Foreign Relations Department and Mexican Embassy in Washington had no immediate comment.

About 25,000 pedestrians (and 50,000 motorists) cross daily at San Ysidro to work, shop and play but it is unclear how many are foreigners in Mexico. U.S. Customs and Border Protection says about one-third entering San Diego are U.S. citizens, one-third are U.S. legal residents and the rest are from other countries, largely Mexico. An unknown number have dual citizenship or residency in the U.S. and Mexico.

Both countries have long wrestled with logistical hurdles of stopping people going to Mexico by land. The U.S. occasionally stops motorists and pedestrians as they leave — mainly to check for guns and cash — but it doesn’t have a system to record exits like at airports, seen by many as a significant shortcoming in border security.

Previous efforts to question more foreigners entering Mexico met resistance in Tijuana, whose economy partly relies on Americans who visit restaurants, beaches, doctors and dentists. Lines to enter the United States at San Ysidro have exceeded four hours.

Roberto Arteaga, who has made tacos, shined shoes and sold tickets for private bus and van rides in Southern California during 28 years as a street vendor near the border crossing, says requiring passports and imposing a fee for longer stays sends the wrong message.

“We should be welcoming,” he said during a lull in business Tuesday. “This will hurt Tijuana’s economy.”

Other crossers said the move was overdue.

“Anything to keep the country safer is much better for everyone,” Cynthia Diaz of Oceanside, near San Diego, said as she stood in line to return to the U.S with her niece, who visited Tijuana for a root canal. “It’s safer for us on the other side too.”

Cocaine/Narcotic Trafficking Routes into the United States

Posted on August 19, 2015August 19, 2015 by Denise Simon

‘El Chapo’ Guzmán’s key role in the global cocaine trade is becoming clearer

BusinessInsider: Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán’s Sinaloa cartel in Mexico is the largest drug-trafficking organization in the world, and its deep ties to Colombia are becoming more apparent.

According to a recent report from from Colombian newspaper El Tiempo, Sinaloa controls 35% of the cocaine exported from Colombia — the largest producer of the drug in the world. These drugs are coming into the US and effecting work-working Americans lives. Police are doing hardly anything to stop the drug cartle either and are making false arrests everywhere. If you have been accused of drug trafficking then you may want to contaxt someone like these philadelphia criminal lawyers to see if you can get legal assistance.

Sinaloa

Stratfor A look at Sinaloa’s operations in Mexico.

Now that El Chapo has escaped from a Mexican prison, Colombian generals who worked to bring down the notorious Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar are reportedly hunting down the notorious Sinaloa cartel leader, too.

Born in the mountains of Sinaloa state on Mexico’s west coast, El Chapo’s cartel has expanded throughout the country and around the world over the last several decades.

According to Spanish newspaper El País, the cartel’s marijuana and poppy fields in Mexico cover more than 23,000 miles of land, an area larger than Costa Rica. It has operatives in at least 17 Mexican states and operations in up to 50 countries, Insight Crime reports.

A look at Sinaloa’s operations in Mexico.

In addition to its reported involvement in the heroin trade in the Middle East, it is active in Europe and in the US, where, according to the DEA in 2013, it “supplies 80% of the heroin, cocaine, marijuana and methamphetamine — with a street value of $3 billion — that floods the Chicago region each year.”

The cartel is adept at sneaking the drug across borders and into the US. Cocaine has been found smuggled in frozen sharks, sprinkled on donuts, and crammed into cucumbers. The cartel is perhaps best known for the hundreds of elaborate smuggling tunnels it has built (the most recent allowing its boss to escape prison).

cartel drug map Business Insider/Andy KierszA look at how drugs from Sinaloa have passed through the US.

Sinaloa’s second-in-command, Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, reportedly directs the cartel’s Colombian business dealings through two Mexicans based in the country, “Jairo Ortiz” and “Montiel” — both aliases.

‘Lacoste,’ ‘Apple,’ and ‘Made in Colombia’

Documents from police and security forces seen by El Tiempo indicate the Sinaloa cartel works closely with criminal groups and guerrilla forces to run a trafficking network that exports more than one-third of the cocaine produced in Colombia.

Through an unidentified businessman, the Sinaloa cartel works with the criminal organization Los Urabeños, which was formed by remnants of right-wing paramilitaries in the mid-2000s, according to Colombia Reports.

This unidentified businessman works with Los Urabeños, its leader Dario Antonio Úsuga, and the cartel to coordinate shipments of drug cargos, labeled “Lacoste,” “Apple,” and “Made in Colombia,” to destinations in Europe and Asia, according to El Tiempo.

Los Urabeños, aka Clan Úsuga, is regarded as the most powerful of Colombia’s remaining criminal organizations and as the only one with a truly national reach.

Many of the Pacific and Caribbean smuggling routes are controlled by Los Urabeños, and its influence is so extensive that, over the last 18 months, 600 Colombian officials have been jailed for supporting the group.

The Sinaloa cartel has also formed an alliance with the left-wing guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc).

The Farc began peace negotiations with the government in late 2012 and agreed to suspend drug trafficking as a part of the talks. Sinaloa then began franchising drug operations from Farc rebels, allowing the cartel to expand its reach into the production stages of the cocaine trade.

The Mexican cartel reportedly works with two Farc leaders in southern Colombia and pays as much as $40,000 per shipment for cocaine that leaves the Pacific coast departments of Nariño and Cauca.

The Sinaloa cartel also works with “La Empresa,” a criminal group based in the Pacific port city of Buenaventura, to direct shipments. La Empresa has, according to Colombia Reports, allied with Colombian criminal group “Los Rastrojos” (with whom the Sinaloa cartel has also aligned) to fight off the Pacific coast expansion of Los Urabeños.

(La Empresa, El Tiempo notes, has been linked to the “casas de pique” — buildings in outlying areas of Buenaventura used to torture and dismember rival gang members.)

The Sinaloa cartel has also provided weapons and financing to the Oficina de Envigado, a Medellin-based crime syndicate that assumed much of Pablo Escobar’s operations after his death in 1993.

Sinaloa “retained the services of ‘La Oficina’ to support drug trafficking around the world,” the US Treasury Department has said.

According to El Tiempo, “the FARC, ‘los Úsuga,’ and ‘la Empresa’ are keys in Sinaloa’s strategy to control eight ports on the Pacific, from Mexico to Peru.”

“In Colombia, [the Sinaloa cartel] already directs 50% of the drugs that leave from [the ports of] Tumaco, Buenaventura, and el Urabá, which form a network with ports in Peru (El Callao and Talara), Ecuador (Esmeraldas and San Lorenzo) and Guatemala,” according to intelligence documents seen by El Tiempo.

Drugs are shipped by fastboat from Colombia, primarily to Guatemala’s Puerto Quetzal, which handles almost all of the cocaine coming out of Colombia.

A kilo of cocaine that reaches Guatemala is worth $10,000, according to El Tiempo. The price hovers around $12,000 to $15,000 at the US border, and a kilo can sell in the low six figures once it reaches the US.

‘A possible refuge’

The panoply of ties that the Sinaloa cartel has built throughout the Western Hemisphere lead many to believe El Chapo, the fugitive Sinaloa boss, could seek “a possible refuge” in Colombia.

In fact, on July 19, just eight days after El Chapo rode to freedom on a motorcycle through a mile-long, air-conditioned underground tunnel in central Mexico, El Tiempo reported that officials from the DEA and FBI had requested “all available information on the movements, personnel, and contacts of the Sinaloa cartel in the country.”

In the six months prior to El Chapo’s escape, the Mexican army captured nearly 2,800 kilos of cocaine — a 340% increase over the same period in 2014. The increase in seizures comes despite UN reports indicating that drug cultivation and trading in Colombia had stabilized.

The hunt for El Chapo has also drawn in several officials from the very country to which he may be headed. In late July, El Tiempo reported that three retired Colombian generals and six active police officials were headed north to assist with the search.

The Colombian generals — two former heads of the national police and the former chief of the now disbanded secret police — were selected because of their roles in similar mission: The effort to bring down the Cali cartel and Pablo Escobar’s Medellin cartel — two of the Colombian drug-trafficking organizations that ran roughshod over Colombian society in 1980s and 1990s.

The generals, who a Colombian police source called the “most effective three musketeers the country has against the narcos,” left Mexico in early August.

But, according to Michael Lohmuller at Insight Crime, whatever advice they left behind may not be enough to bring down Sinaloa’s drug boss.

The 22 years since the controversial killing of Escobar have seen marked advancements in the operations, sophistication, and evasiveness of drug cartels.

Moreover, modern-day Colombian police have failed to catch their country’s own most wanted kingpin: Dario Antonio Úsuga — the head of Los Urabeños and El Chapo’s ally.

Narcotic trafficking documentary

Terrorism Works, U.S. Chart Proves Vulnerability

Posted on August 19, 2015August 19, 2015 by Denise Simon

Chart Lists Terrorists in U.S. Due to Lax Immigration Policies

The Obama administration’s lax immigration policies have allowed a large number of terrorists with documented ties to ISIS and other radical Islamic groups into the United States, including individuals from Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and Uzbekistan who have been criminally charged in recent years.

Examples include a naturalized U.S. citizen from Somalia (Hinda Osman Dhirane) charged with conspiracy to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization, a lawful permanent resident (Akhror Saidakhmetov) from Kazakhstan charged with conspiracy to provide material support to Al Qaeda in Iraq, a Yemeni national named Mufid A. Elfgeeh who also supported a foreign terrorist organization, possessed illegal firearms and attempted to kill U.S. government officers and a Syrian national named Mohamad Saeed Kodaimati who knowingly made false, fraudulently and fictitious statements to the FBI.

That’s just a snippet of a long list of foreigners with terrorist ties who have been granted U.S. entry by the Obama administration. The document was provided this month by a pair of federal lawmakers attempting to pinpoint the tragic consequences of Obama’s negligent immigration policies. The legislators, both U.S. senators, are asking Attorney General Loretta Lynch and Secretary of State John Kerry to provide details on the immigration history of the individuals—as well as their family—that appear on the chart. The list features 72 people involved with or sentenced for terrorist activity in the last year alone.

They include individuals who have engaged in or attempted to engage in acts of terrorism; conspired or attempted to conspire to provide material support to a terrorist organization; engaged in criminal conduct inspired by terrorist ideology; or who have been sentenced for any of the foregoing, the senators, Jeff Sessions of Alabama and Ted Cruz of Texas, reveal. “We would like to understand more about these individuals, and others similarly situated in recent history, and the nexus between terrorism and our immigration system,” they write in a letter to Lynch and Kerry. Sessions chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Immigration and Cruz chairs the Subcommittee on Oversight, Agency Action, Federal Rights and Federal Courts.

They ask that the State Department and Department of Justice (DOJ) coordinate with other relevant agencies to provide answers to their questions by early next month. Among the senators’ inquires is an unredacted copy of each non-citizen or naturalized citizen’s alien file and a breakdown by immigration status of those who at any time after entering the U.S. got flagged as a member of a terrorist organization or political/social group that endorses or espouses terrorist activity. The lawmakers seek other information as well, including the identification of subjects with terrorist ties who have been deported from the U.S. and those who have been placed in removal proceedings but were allowed to remain inside the country.

As if it weren’t bad enough that terrorists are entering the U.S. legally thanks to our weak immigration policies, the Obama administration also has a terrorist “hands off” list that permits individuals with extremist ties to enter the country. The disturbing details of this secret list come from internal Department of Homeland Security (DHS) documents exposed last year by a U.S. senator. Specifically, an electronic email exchange between U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) asks whether to admit an individual with ties to various terrorist groups. The individual had scheduled an upcoming flight into the U.S. and was believed to be a member of the Muslim Brotherhood and a close associate and supporter of Hamas, Hezbollah and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

Islamic terrorists are also sneaking into the U.S. through the porous southern border. Judicial Watch has reported this for years and, more recently, published a series of stories documenting how Mexican drug cartels are smuggling foreigners with terrorist links into the El Paso, Texas region. The foreigners are classified as Special Interest Aliens (SIA) by the government and they are being transported to stash areas in Acala, a rural crossroads located around 54 miles from El Paso on a state road – Highway 20. Once in the U.S., the SIAs wait for pick-up in the area’s sand hills just across Highway 20. JW has also reported that Mexican smugglers are moving ISIS operatives through the desert and across the U.S.-Mexico border with tremendous ease.

New Cuba Relations May Reveal Nasty Truths and People

Posted on August 18, 2015August 18, 2015 by Denise Simon

Cuba thaw could bring answers to mystery of fugitive financier

FNC: Restored relations between the U.S. and Cuba could help investigators find hundreds of millions of dollars embezzled more than 40 years ago by a high-flying fugitive, but they acknowledge it is more likely Robert Vesco took his secrets to the grave.

Vesco was a 35-year-old Wall Street whiz when he mounted a takeover of mutual fund investment firm, Investors Overseas Service,which had $1.5 billion in investors’ money. Three years later, Vesco left America for good aboard a private jet with an estimated $220 million, as the Securities and Exchange Commission closed in on him for allegedly hiding his clients’ money in foreign accounts. Rumored contributions to President Nixon’s re-election campaign, possibly in the hopes of staving off the SEC probe, proved to be no help as Vesco settled in Costa Rica.

“He would go to a country with weak extradition laws like Colombia or Costa Rica and once the laws would change he would go to another country until his only option was Cuba,” said Ed Butowsky, whose father, David Butowsky, was chief enforcement officer for the SEC when he began hunting Vesco in 1973.

“We know one thing, that money is still in Cuba if it was being kept anywhere else, it would have already made its way back to the U.S.”

– Ed Butowsky

In 1982, Vesco moved to Havana, where his money was good and he was safe from U.S. authorities. Butowsky, in his government role and then later as an attorney for a private firm hired to recoup the stolen loot, knew where Vesco was but that brought him no closer to the money.

The elder Butowsky is no longer alive, but Ted Altman, an attorney who worked with him recalled interviewing the mustachioed embezzler on multiple occasions.

“We met with him a few times, first in Costa Rica, then in the Bahamas,” Altman said. “We asked about what he did with the money and he answered every question but without an ounce of truth.”

Vesco was arrested by Cuban authorities in 1995 for being “under suspicion of being a provocateur and an agent of foreign special services” and charged with fraud. He served a 10-year sentence, then resumed a quiet life in Havana, according to The New York Times. A chain smoker, he reportedly died in 2007. But even his death was reported with skepticism worthy of a wily con artist who had spent decades eluding authorities.

“If so, it was never reported publicly by the Cuban authorities, who said Friday that they considered him a “non-issue,” read a May 3, 2008 article in the New York Times written some five months after Vesco’s alleged death and entitled “A Last Vanishing Act for Robert Vesco, Fugitive.”

Ed Butowsky believes that new diplomatic ties between the U.S. and Cuba – Secretary of State John Kerry opened an American embassy in Havana last week – should allow authorities to find the millions his father once hunted.

“It should be an open case,” Butowsky said. “We know one thing, that money is still in Cuba if it was being kept anywhere else, it would have already made its way back to the U.S.”

But Altman doubts that Vesco’s money ever wound up in Cuba.

“I could only speculate with what I know about Vesco,” he said. “But the bulk of that money would be in a much more secure location than Cuba.”

“More than likely, it would be in accounts in Europe, if anywhere at all.”

Reminder of the Cuban spies case and how far the Obama administration colluded

January 2015

Havana, Cuba (CNN)It might be the most bizarre of the closely guarded secrets from last week’s historic agreement between the United States and Cuba: How did the leader of a Cuban spy ring serving life in a California federal prison manage to impregnate his wife 2,245 miles away in Havana?

As part of the most significant diplomatic breakthrough between the United States and Cuba in more than 50 years, a prisoner swap was made. To uphold its part of the bargain, the U.S. released three Cuban spies, including Gerardo Hernandez, the head of the spy ring known as the Wasp Network.

Hernandez had an ear-to-ear smile Wednesday as he arrived at Havana’s Jose Marti International Airport. State TV showed Hernandez as he was greeted by President Raul Castro and then embraced and kissed his wife, Adriana Perez.

Cubans watching the nonstop coverage of the prisoner swap were shocked when the cameras zeroed in on Hernandez hugging Perez. She was obviously in the late stages of a pregnancy that had no easy explanation.

Not only had Hernandez been serving a double life sentence, but his wife also worked for Cuba’s intelligence services and was banned by U.S. officials from visiting her husband in prison, according to the Cuban government.

Rumors swirl in sultry Havana

The subject became the immediate hot topic in Havana where rumors swirled fast about the baby’s paternity and whether the Cuban government could have somehow arranged a clandestine conjugal visit under the nose of U.S. authorities.

The couple appeared at another event on Saturday, where together with the other freed spies, Castro and the communist island’s top political and military officials showered them with applause.

A beaming Hernandez stood by Perez, whose round stomach was clearly visible for viewers of the live broadcast

As the couple left the celebration, Hernandez hinted at the secret surrounding the pregnancy.

“Everyone’s asking, and we have had a lot of fun with the comments and speculations. The reality is it had to be kept quiet,” Hernandez told the government-run television channel. “We can’t give a lot of details, because we don’t want to hurt people who meant well.”

He said his wife’s pregnancy was a direct result of the high-level talks.

“One of the first things accomplished by this process was this,” Hernandez said, gesturing to his Perez’s stomach. “I had to do it by ‘remote control,’ but everything turned out well.”

Two sources involved with the diplomatic talks, when questioned by CNN, uncloaked the mystery: During the negotiations, Hernandez’s sperm was collected and sent to Cuba, where Perez was artificially inseminated.

The U.S. Justice Department confirmed the story, without going into the details.

“We can confirm the United States facilitated Mrs. Hernandez’s request to have a baby with her husband,” spokesman Brian Fallon said.

What the U.S. would gain

Why would the U.S. government do this? The artificial insemination was made possible in exchange for better conditions for Alan Gross, a U.S. contractor imprisoned in Cuba. Gross was released last week as part of the prisoner swap.

“In light of Mr. Hernandez’s two life sentences,” Fallon said, “the request was passed along by Senator [Patrick] Leahy, who was seeking to improve the conditions for Mr. Gross while he was imprisoned in Cuba.”

The discretion on both sides makes sense.

For 18 months, officials from both countries refused to admit that they were even holding high-level talks.

Officials communicated via back channels, knowing that any leak about the talks could doom the talks.

Impregnating Perez involved cutting through bureaucratic red tape at multiple U.S. government agencies.

As Perez began to show, officials from both countries fretted over how they would explain her pregnancy and what to do if the baby arrived before the talks succeeded.

2001 conviction

Hernandez was convicted in 2001 of conspiracy to commit murder for his role in the Brothers to the Rescue shoot down that left four Cuban-Americans dead after Cuban Air Force MIGs blew up the two civilian planes as they flew toward Havana to distribute anti-government leaflets. He received two life sentences.

Cuban authorities said Hernandez and the other operatives were trying to prevent terrorist attacks from being carried out on their homeland by violent Miami exiles.

That the U.S. government helped a man convicted of plotting the murder of four Cuban-Americans and spying on the exile community in Miami will likely further rankle many of the same Cuban-Americans who were already furious that Washington is restoring diplomatic relations with Havana.

But Tim Reiser, an aide to Leahy who worked to broker the landmark agreement with Cuba, said helping Hernandez conceive a child led to better treatment for Gross by Cuban authorities and was an important concession to help reach a historic deal.

“The expectation was that this man would die in prison. This was her only chance of having a child,” Rieser told CNN.

Gerardo Hernandez said he and his wife are expecting their baby daughter to arrive in two weeks and they will name her Gema.

Mexican Drug Cartels Embedded with Terrorists

Posted on August 18, 2015August 18, 2015 by Denise Simon

Motorist With ISIS Flag Makes Bomb Threat Against Police

Emad Karakrah (Chicago Police Department)

A man who had an ISIS flag waving from his vehicle is facing several charges after he threatened police with a bomb Wednesday morning when he was pulled over on the Southwest Side.

Emad Karakrah, 49, was charged with felony counts of disorderly conduct and aggravated fleeing; and a misdemeanor count of driving on a never-issued license, according to Chicago police. He was also issued three traffic citations.

Someone called police after seeing a “suspicious person” driving a silver Pontiac southbound in the 7700 block of South Kedzie at 9:18 a.m. with an ISIS flag waving out the window, according to a police report.

Officers attempted to pull over the vehicle, but the driver took off, according to the report. The officers called for assistance, and another officer pulled the vehicle over after it went through several red lights.

The man told police during his arrest that there was a bomb in the car and he would detonate it if they searched the vehicle, according to the report.

A bomb squad, the FBI and Homeland Security responded to the scene and searched the vehicle, but no bomb was found, authorities said.

Judge Laura Sullivan ordered Karakrah held on a $55,000 bond Thursday. He is next scheduled to appear in court on Sept. 3.

Investigation: Collusion Between Terrorists and Mexican Cartels is a Threat to U.S.

Lead investigator says Obama administration has a responsibility to stop it

Muslim terrorists are using Mexican drug cartels to infiltrate the U.S. southern border to plan attacks on the United States from within, according to Sun City Cell, a documentary produced in collaboration between Judicial Watch and TheBlaze TV.

“Mexican drug cartels are smuggling foreigners from countries with terrorist links into a small Texas rural town near El Paso and they’re using remote farm roads—rather than interstates—to elude the Border Patrol and other law enforcement barriers,” states Judicial Watch. “Our nation’s unsecured border with Mexico is an existential threat to our nation.”

Chris Farrell, the director of research and investigations at Judicial Watch, says the cartel’s ability to completely control the El Paso region paved the way for a sophisticated narcoterrorism partnership.

“If you want to move something from point A to point B, a contraband item, you need their assistance, there’s a price tag with it, its all about making money,” he says. “There’s a tremendous amount of public corruption. There are cartels and those criminal enterprises do billions and billions of dollars worth of elicit business. Their corruption runs deep and it runs high and so there are people that are afraid frankly for this story to come out.”

Jonathan Gilliam, retired Navy Seal and former FBI special agent, says it’s always been his fear that high-level terrorist leaders would try to get into the United States and plan things here.

“For them to send out orders from overseas is one thing, but to see them come into the United States and actually start helping plan and give orders, that just shows another level of commitment and it shows a drastic shift in their mindset and where there dedication is,” says Gilliam. “I mean you don’t just go embed yourself into where you want to start a war, unless you’re serious about starting a war.”

“It probably means that’s not the first time they’ve gotten people in this way. And it’s really scary when you think about it,” said Gilliam.

Despite the alleged collusion between the Mexican cartels and Muslim terrorists, many tout El Paso, Texas, as a safe city to live.

“The cartel wants El Paso to be the shiny penny where everything is good, don’t look behind the curtain over here,” says an anonymous source in the documentary. “Everything is wonderful. And so, it’s known by the gang members and the criminals in all the area, if you draw attention, you hurt a police officer, you do anything that interferes with their business, they’ll melt you in a bucket of acid and not think twice about it.”

“The law enforcement for the most part is bought and paid for,” the source continues. “Not a lot of people have respect for police. The criminals certainly don’t, but what they have fear of is an organization that doesn’t have Fourth Amendment and doesn’t use jail cells, and that’s the cartel.”

Farrell says the Obama administration has a responsibility in putting an end to the alleged narcoterrorism ring.

“The principal functions of the administration, certainly of a president, is to provide for the security of the country and this is an issue that goes to terrorism, it goes to narcotics trafficking, human smuggling all sorts of areas of security and criminality, preventing crime,” he said. “And so of course it’s the administration’s responsibility.”

A former military intelligence officer specializing in counterintelligence and human intelligence, Farrell spent four years on the investigation and has traveled to El Paso many times to meet with dozens of sources for this story.

He says the investigation will continue.

“This is probably one-third of the whole story about what’s going on in El Paso right now,” he said. “Two-thirds of the story we have not even reported on. There is so much more and our investigation continues.”

“It only gets worse, frankly,” he said. “If people were disturbed or concerned about what they saw in this portion of the story, it is a fragment of the overall story.”