- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- Another Front
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- 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."
-
- How is the U.S. countering the threat of terrorists using
human smuggling operations and finding refuge in Mexico? Rather than securing
our border generally, the government tolerates large-scale illegal immigration,
while trying to selectively stop the smuggling operations most likely to
move terrorists. The administration, Greene told Congress, has put in place
an "enforcement initiative aimed at targeting alien smuggling organizations
specializing in the movement of U.S.-bound aliens from countries that are
of interest to the national security of the United States."
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- Balaghi was from Lebanon.
-
- On June 5, 2002, he showed up, vomiting blood, at Scripps
Memorial Hospital-Chula Vista. He quickly died. When the Border Patrol
heard his symptoms, they feared radiation sickness÷and dispatched
an agent with a detector to check his remains.
-
- Balaghi was clean. But he was far from the only Middle
Easterner Boughader's ring had smuggled.
-
- In an affidavit, Border Patrol Agent John R. Korkin said
an investigation "positively identified at least 80 Lebanese nationals
that have been, or were intercepted in the process of being, smuggled into
the U.S." by the ring. Boughader admitted in court to smuggling more
than 100. He was sentenced to one year in prison, and deported to Mexico
in November.
-
- Almost immediately, Mexican authorities arrested him
in their own anti-smuggling case. A few days later, they arrested Ortiz.
-
- She had worked in Mexico's foreign service for 25 years.
From 1998 to October 2001, AP reported, she was Mexico's consul in Lebanon.
She later directed the consular office in Mexico City.
-
- She was fired in May, AP said, "after 150 Mexican
passports were stolen and two others were found to have been issued irregularly."
-
- Jose Santiago Vasconcelos, Mexico's assistant attorney
general, told Notimex that Boughader's ring moved "a great number
of Arabs" into the United States. El Occidental, a Mexican newspaper,
said it was "at least 200."
-
- I asked Skerlos to compare that number to the "at
least 80 Lebanese nationals" cited in Korkin's affidavit "I think
it is fair to say that the numbers we included in our affidavit were conservative,"
he said.
-
- Almost a month after Ortiz was arrested, Homeland Security
Secretary Tom Ridge said: "The bottom line is, as a country we have
to come to grips with the presence of 8 to 12 million illegals, afford
them some kind of legal status some way, but also as a country decide what
our immigration policy is and then enforce it."
-
- No, Mr. Secretary. We already have immigration laws.
It's your duty to enforce them. If the arrest of a Mexican diplomat for
helping to smuggle Arabs into the U.S. can't convince you of the need for
that, what will?
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- Copyright © 2003 HUMAN EVENTS. All Rights Reserved.
- http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=2716
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