Terence Jeffrey of Human Events contributes a disturbing piece entitled “Mexican Diplomat Charged With Helping Smuggle Arabs Into U.S.”
The real life horror story that began eighteen months ago when an Arab illegal alien named Youseff Balaghi showed up at a San Diego hospital, dying from what the Border Patrol initially””and erroneously””feared was radiation sickness, has now reached high into Mexico’s foreign service.
On Sept. 11, 2001, Imelda Ortiz Abdala was Mexico’s consul in Lebanon. On Nov. 12, 2003, Mexican authorities arrested her, according to the Associated Press, ‘on charges of helping a smuggling ring move Arab migrants into the United States from Mexico.’ The AP said Mexico had also arrested ‘alleged ring leader Salim Boughader Mucharafille.’ Boughader earlier pleaded guilty in the U.S. to the smuggling incident that resulted in Balaghi’s death.
Unfortunately, this story is not over. Assistant U.S. Attorney Mike Skerlos prosecuted Boughader. This week, citing Ortiz’s arrest, I asked him if there were other rings still bringing Middle Easterners in from Mexico. ‘Yes,’ he said.
Far from Iraq, there’s another front where the terror war’s not over. It’s on our own border””and, here, the key enemies are the smugglers who bring people such as Balaghi into California, and who collaborate with allegedly corrupt officials such as Ortiz.
In congressional testimony in 2002, then-Assistant Immigration and Naturalization Service Commissioner Joseph Greene said: ‘Information available to the INS indicates terrorist organizations often use human smuggling operations to move around the globe.’ According to a Library of Congress study, ‘Organized Crime and Terrorist Activity in Mexico, 1999-2002,’ former Mexican national security adviser Adolfo Aguilar Zinser said in May 2001: ‘Spanish and Islamic terrorist groups are using Mexico as a refuge.'”