Foreign 'terrorists' breach U.S. border

Almost nine years after terrorists murdered 2,751 people on Sept. 11, 2001, the U.S. is still facing a major threat as hundreds of illegal aliens from countries known to support and sponsor terrorism sneak across the U.S.-Mexico border. Thousands of illegal aliens apprehended along the 2,000 mile border stretching through California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas aren't even from Mexico. The U.S. Border Patrol calls them "Other Than Mexicans," or OTMs, and many are citizens of countries that are sponsors of terrorism. A 2006 congressional report on border threats, titled "A Line in the Sand: Confronting the Threat at the Southwest Border" and prepared by the House Committee on Homeland Security Subcommittee on Investigations, indicated that 1.2 million illegal aliens were apprehended in 2005 alone, and 165,000 of those were from countries other than Mexico. Approximately 650 were from "special interest countries," or nations the Border Patrol defines as "designated by the intelligence community as countries that could export individuals that could bring harm to our country in the way of terrorism." Illegal aliens from Central America ride atop a freight train leaving Arriaga, Mexico, en route to the U.S. (photo: Hogar de la Misericordia, or Home of Mercy) Atlanta's WSB-TV2 aired a segment on U.S. border security after it obtained records from a federal detention center near Phoenix, Ariz., and found current listings for illegal aliens from Afghanistan, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Sudan and Yemen. WSB-TV 2 published a population breakdown from an Immigration and Customs Enforcement staging facility in Florence, Ariz., dated April 15, 2010, which includes detainees from as far away as Afghanistan, Armenia, Bosnia, Egypt, Ghana, Iraq, Iran, Jordan, Kenya, Morocco, Pakistan, Sudan, Uzbekistan, Yemen, Botswana, Turkey and many other countries. Based on U.S. Border Patrol statistics, there were 30,147 OTMs apprehended in fiscal year 2003; 44, 614 in fiscal year 2004; 165,178 in fiscal year 2005; and 108,025 in fiscal year 2006. Most were caught along the U.S. Southwest border...more