Increasing Importance of the Southwest Border to Terrorist Organizations

Source: A MAJORITY REPORT
BY THE
UNITED STATES HOUSE COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY
SUBCOMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT, INVESTIGATIONS, AND
MANAGEMENT
REPRESENTATIVE MICHAEL T. McCAUL, CHAIRMAN
ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
NOVEMBER 2012
A LINE IN THE SAND: COUNTERING CRIME,
VIOLENCE AND TERROR AT THE
SOUTHWEST BORDER

THE INCREASING IMPORTANCE OF THE SOUTHWEST BORDER TO TERRORIST ORGANIZATIONS

The September 11th terrorist attacks demonstrated with catastrophic clarity the deficiencies in the
process of preventing terrorists from entering the United States. After all, the nineteen 9/11 hijackers did not sneak into our country surreptitiously in the remote Arizona desert but rather entered in plain sight at international airports as visiting students or tourists using visas that had been obtained fraudulently.8 As part of a strategy to constrain the international travel of terrorists, the 9/11 Commission recommended that a computer system be developed which would identify foreign travelers and check them against terrorist and criminal databases.9 This recommendation was realized in January of 2004 when the United States Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology (USVISIT) system began deployment at our ports of entry. US-VISIT scans the fingerprints of foreign visitors and checks them against numerous criminal and intelligence databases to include enemy combatants captured on the battlefield. Besides US-VISIT, there is also much greater scrutiny of individuals seeking a visa to travel to
the United States. Now Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) special agents work sideby-
side with State Department employees at strategic foreign posts helping them screen visa
applicants to weed out criminals and terrorists before they even attempt to travel to our shores.
As part of their strategy for attack, terrorists analyze the defenses of their target and plan
accordingly.10 Just as increased air marshals, reinforced cockpit doors and armed pilots have
forever changed the proposition of hijacking a commercial airliner, the aforementioned security
measures have made conventional travel by terrorists much more risky. Sophisticated terror
networks like al-Qaeda and Hezbollah are well aware of this and would surely consider
alternative methods of travel in order to increase their chances for success.
This is why experts believe the Southwest border has now become the greatest threat of terrorist
infiltration into the United States.11 Terrorists know they do not need a visa to illegally cross the
Southwest border and that US-VISIT is nowhere to be found miles away from a port of entry.
They also know that there are well-established criminal networks along the Southwest border
that are very successful at smuggling humans and weapons.12 This gives terrorists once again a
high level of surety that they can surreptitiously plan elaborate and expensive attacks. Read Article