“On the Holmes Front, with Frank Holmes”
If anyone you know doubts that we need to build a wall across the Southern border, just show them this column.
Even if you support Trump’s wall, you’ll be shocked – and a little frightened – by how much we need tight security right now.
It’s only natural – with a hostile media that runs negative news about Donald Trump more than 90% of the time – that some people may question whether we really need a “big, beautiful wall” across the Mexican border.
We need to control our borders to keep out street gangs like MS-13 and the deadly drugs fueling the opiate epidemic, but there’s a much more important reason to start building today.
An untold number of the men who crossed the border illegally are fertile recruits for terrorist groups like ISIS.
Don’t take my word for it – ask the U.S. Treasury Department.
“Hundreds” of illegal aliens came into the country from the Middle East, from one human smuggler alone.
On Wednesday, the Treasury slapped sanctions against the Barakat Transnational Criminal Organization.
Its leader, Nassif Barakat, charged Syrian and Lebanese citizens $20,000 apiece to smuggle them across the Mexican border into the Great Satan.
He bought the “refugees” phony passports claiming the people were actually from Europe. Sometimes, he took Muslims through a series of other countries to throw off suspicious authorities before they landed in Brazil. That’s where they would slowly begin trekking through Central America and Mexico to the United States.
Here’s why that’s a problem – a huge problem
A poll found that 13% of would-be “refugees” in Syria had a positive view of ISIS.
Another 10% had only a lukewarm rejection of ISIS. This is a terror group that uses beheadings, rape, and torture to spread radical Islam.
That means about one-in-four Syrian refugees are susceptible to being recruited into a terrorist organization before they ever set foot on U.S. soil.
Barakat likely brought dozens of pro-ISIS Muslims into the United States — all because bleeding-heart liberals won’t close the border.
If ISIS isn’t enough, there may just be another terrorist connection: Nassif Barakat leads these “refugees” to the same corner of the globe run by terrorist financiers – who are also named Barakat.
The Treasury Department called Assad Ahmad Barakat “a key terrorist financier in South America who has used every financial crime in the book, including his businesses, to generate funding for Hezbollah.”
America has so many enemies that sometimes we can’t keep them straight, but Hezbollah is a major one.
Before 9/11, Hezbollah had killed more Americans than any other terrorist organization. It killed hundreds of U.S. soldiers by shelling the barracks in Beirut in the 1980s, and it killed another 19 soldiers in the Khobar Towers attack in 1996.
Assad also based his illegal ventures in the Tri-Border Area (TBA) of Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay – the same place these illegals begin their journey to the U.S.
Treasury officials didn’t say whether Mr. Barakat and Mr. Barakat ever worked together…but there’s definitely potential that one of Hezbollah’s recruits might want to tag along to the U.S.
The good news is the Trump administration has cracked down hard on the human smuggler. The sanctions cut off his money supply, and anyone who breaks the order could serve 20 years in prison.
The bad news is, he’s not the only way hardcore Islamists are sneaking into America – and Mexico isn’t lifting a finger to stop them.
The Border Patrol calls illegals from anywhere other than Mexico “OTMs” (other than Mexicans). 222,847 OTMs cross the border in 2016, according to the Border Patrol.
Worse yet, the Mexican government knows that Middle Easterners use its territory as a halfway house to the U.S. – and they’re turning a blind eye or helping them.
Mexican government officials have noted an uptick in immigrants from the Middle East.
“I imagine people come to Mexico because of being close to the United States,” admitted the coordinator of one Mexican group that works with so-called refugees. “Mexico represents a step closer to the U.S., so there may be the possibility of going there eventually.”
As long as the border is wide open, they will be successful. With about one-quarter of ready to be radicalized, recruited, and turned into “domestic” terrorists, this means scores of ticking time bombs are being trafficked into the American homeland ever year.
Those are the stakes if we don’t build the wall and seal our borders against anyone from a terrorist nation.
It’s not racism. It’s not Islamophobia. It’s not cold-hearted, or hypocrisy, or “hate.”
It’s common sense — and it just may be the only way to stop the next terrorist attack on U.S. soil.
— Frank Holmes is a reporter for The Horn News. He is a veteran journalist and an outspoken conservative that talks about the news that was in his weekly article, “On The Holmes Front.