• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Home
  • About Todd
  • OVERRUN book website
  • America’s Covert Border War book
  • Awards
  • Book Todd to Speak

Todd Bensman

From Journalism to Counterterrorism Intelligence - and Back.

  • Securing Borders
  • Terrorism & Homeland
  • Todd In the News
  • Congressional Testimony
  • My War In Bosnia Essay

An Interview with a Bangladeshi in Costa Rica en Route to the U.S. Southwest Border

December 19, 2018 by Todd Bensman

This entry is part 6 of 8 in the series Out of Panama and Costa Rica: Terror Travel Threat Investigation

Whether 29-year-old Omar Farouk, 29, is hiding a forbidden past and present as a terrorist operative is a question for American homeland security officers to answer when he finally reaches the American southern border in a month or two. I found him in a Costa Rican immigration processing center, after he crossed in from Panama and, before that, from Brazil and Colombia. He is from Bangladesh, having traveled with several other Bangladeshis this far.

In Paso Canoas, Costa Rica

By Todd Bensman as originally published December 19, 2018 by the Center for Immigration Studies

PASO CANOAS, Costa Rica — Whether 29-year-old Omar Farouk, 29, is hiding a forbidden past and present as a terrorist operative is a question for American homeland security officers to answer when he finally reaches the American southern border in a month or two. I found him in a Costa Rican immigration processing center, after he crossed in from Panama and, before that, from Brazil and Colombia. He is from Bangladesh, having traveled with several other Bangladeshis this far.

American authorities do — and should — feel obligated to fully interview Farouk and check into his background should he show up at the border. He’ll be appropriately tagged as a “special interest alien”, warranting a deeper intelligence dive because, as I have written, Bangladesh these days is “highly trammeled by ISIS and al-Qaeda sympathizers, brooding members of a radical Islamist party now out of power, homegrown jihadists of various strands, mosques where extremism is preached, and returning foreign terrorist fighters with combat experience in Syria.”

On the surface, the English-speaking Farouk did not appear to be any of these things and, here at the Costa Rican immigration processing center, he had just submitted to providing his fingerprints, retinal eye scans, and three-angle facial recognition photos via American-provided equipment. By design and prior collaborative arrangement, this material will all end up with U.S. law enforcement intelligence. Plus, he submitted to an interview with me, an American gringo stranger. All of this augurs pretty well for an argument that Farouk likely is no terrorist but an economic migrant, even though Bangladesh is booming economically. Most Bangladeshis are not terrorists nor do they sympathize with terrorists.

But again, we are obligated to know one way or another, because a great many Bangladeshis are migrating over this very same route to the U.S. border, perhaps too many to properly vet. Not all are sound potential U.S. citizens, such as the Bangladeshi migrants who reached the Arizona border together in 2010 and admitted they belonged to a U.S.-designated terrorist organization. One was deported while the other applied for asylum and then absconded without ever showing up for the hearing.

It’s a truly rare thing to find such a Bangladeshi migrant and for one to provide a taped interview from the road north. Here is one now; click below or here:

Series Navigation<< Interview with an Iranian Migrant in Costa Rica En Route to the U.S. BorderA Rare Interview with a Pakistani Migrant in Costa Rica en Route to the U.S. Border >>

Filed Under: Securing America's Borders

Subscribe to Mailing List

Subscribing to my list will entitle subscribers to be alerted to blog posts, articles and writings as they are published, as well as any special announcements.

Primary Sidebar

Subscribe to Bensman’s Newsletter

Sign Up

Bensman’s Books

Cover of America's Covert Boarder War book Cover of Overrun Book

Follow Me Online

Find Bensman on LinkedIn Find Bensman on Twitter Find Bensman on Gettr Find Bensman on Truth Social

Related Posts

What’s Happening in Mexico?
New Book Review in The American Conservative: America Overrun, America Transformed
With Friends Like Colombia, Panama and Costa Rica Moving Global Migrants to the US Southern Border, Who Needs Enemies?
Amid Media Silence, Congressman Asks FBI Chief About Border-Jumping Yemenis
Daily Mail: Cartel secrets exposed: Inside Mexican gang territory
Video: U.S. Enabling Mass Asylum and Humanitarian Permit Fraud at the Southern Border
Biden-Harris DHS Already Does a Smaller Version of Trump’s ‘Cruel’ Mass Deportation of Immigrant Families – with No Media Freakout
Mexico Freed a Suspected Yemeni Terrorist Migrant – and Left Americans to Find Him
Time for a US Medical Aid Relief Operation to Mexico and Tightening the Covid “Border Closure”
Border Sex Trafficking Cases Should Challenge Sound of Freedom Skeptics

© 2025 · Todd Bensman · Site By WP Attendant