Securing America's Borders

The Trump Administration released its National Strategy for Counterterrorism earlier this month. It is the latest iteration of an exercise that has become tradition since the attacks of 9/11. President George W. Bush started the post-9/11 tradition of breaking out the terrorism threat from the broader National Security Strategy with his administration's February … [Read more...] about New White House National Strategy for Counterterrorism: Europe Migrant-Terrorist Infiltration Phenom Matters to U.S. Land Border Security

As explained already at some length in my recent CIS Backgrounder, migrants from Muslim-majority countries routinely get to the U.S. Southwest border by first reaching Latin America and traveling smuggling routes northward. Human smuggling networks that move these so-called "special interest aliens" through Latin America pose a recognized vulnerability of terrorist infiltration, which … [Read more...] about Terrorist Travel to the United States Southern Border: New State Dept. Report Cites “Vulnerability” of Border to Terrorist Infiltration from Latin America

By Todd Bensman, published September 11, 2018 by Center for Immigration Studies As when they cross a U.S. land border unknown and with no ID, Somalis who formally apply for refugee resettlement — at, say, a U.S. embassy or refugee camp abroad — present a security challenge to officials trying to separate the malevolent from the benign. Discerning the difference for Somalis is far more … [Read more...] about New Terrorism Case-In-Point: Why Somalia Is on the Travel Ban List and Must Stay There

Takeaways from the latest ICE effort to shut down bridges that connect Muslim-majority nations to the U.S. Southwest border The first border-crossing migrant to allegedly conduct an ISIS-inspired attack in North America was a Somali named Abdulahi Hasan Sharif, who somehow first made his way to Tijuana and across the California border, as I recently detailed. Sharif went on to carry an ISIS … [Read more...] about Somali Smuggler Brought at Least 50 Migrants to the TX, CA Borders

As I described in a recent Backgrounder, the U.S. homeland security establishment — under Republicans and Democrats alike — has long regarded the notion that terrorists could infiltrate through the nation's land borders and later attack as a real thing. Congress and those who do homeland security for a living have quietly worried about this enough, anyway, to justify years of treasure and effort … [Read more...] about Two Recent Smuggling Cases Provide a Rare Glimpse of a Terrorism Threat at the Southwest Border and What ICE Is Doing About It

A terror attack by a border-crossing migrant in North America was unheard of. So when Somali national Abdulahi Hasan Sharif in September 2017 conducted vehicle-ramming attacks while carrying an ISIS flag in Canada's Edmonton, Alberta, it should have been treated as a lesson-learning precedent about terrorist border infiltration not unlike the border-crossing migrants attacking in … [Read more...] about The First Border-Crosser to Attack in North America: Finally, an Update