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 Editorials | Issues | May 2007 
Potential Threats Loom Along the Border
 Anthony Franklin - KSWT News
The Sonoran desert lands of southern Arizona are harsh. Hot by day, freezing by night and landscapped by a spiderweb of trails footworn by illegal aliens, not all of them here in search of a minimum wage job.
They’re not all from Mexico, and that’s just the ones who are caught.
Government officials say as many as 190,000 illegals from countries other than Mexico may have entered the United States in the last year.
Tucson, labeled, as a result of the 9/11 Commission Report, an Al-Qaeda hotbed, where Osama bin Laden’s top agent for procuring weapons of mass destruction was among several key Al-Qaeda figures who attended the university or lived here during the 1980s and 1990s.
They filtered into and out of the mosque here because it was the only one in Tucson at the time, keeping to themselves and not getting involved in the community.
Congressional findings and public testimony have disclosed that Hani Hanjour, a Saudi who piloted the hijacked airliner into the Pentagon, trained at flight schools in Tucson starting as early as 1996.
He lived mostly in the East Valley, including at one point in 2001, with fellow hijacker Nawaf al-Hazmi.
“Although our role is still to stop immigration, we question anybody that we detect entering the country illegally, whether it’s a Mexican or somebody from outside Mexico or whether it’s a terrorist. We’re gonna treat it the same way. That person needs to be tracked. That person needs to be identified. That person needs to be interviewed and arrested if necessary,” says Andy Adame, spokesman for the Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector.
Cochise County sheriff Larry Dever says, “We’re having to bear a tremendous burden because of the cost.”
Sheriff Dever has taken a tough stance against illegal aliens who have all but swamped his county. He says the illegals aren’t just coming over here to work anymore. It’s not like it used to be.
“In fact, are some of them terrorists? Do some of them intend to bring harm to this country? The answer to that is anybody who wants to cross the border here can.”
The U.S. Consulate’s fraud investigator in Nogales received a bulletin warning that suspected Al-Qaeda terror cell leader Adan el Shukrijumah was believed to be trying to enter the United States illegally from Mexico along immigrant smuggling routes. A $5 million bounty was offered for the capture of this 29-year-old Saudi who was trained in flight, explosives and terrorist operations.
As a result, it’s no longer uncommon to encounter heavily armed property owners and vigilantes peering through desert underbrush looking for illegal border crossers and fearing there may be foreign terrorists among them. |
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