The Existential Threat of an Open Border

With so much else in the news, the ongoing crisis on our southern border has received relatively little attention recently.  If you watch the mainstream news broadcasts or read the nation’s leading newspapers—you might not even be aware the border is still in crisis.  The daily dangers on the border, the human suffering, the influx of drugs, the young victims of sex trafficking are ignored—literally—by the Biden Administration.  It is not only bad border security policy, but also the absence of a border security policy.  There is no real action to address border security, and the President and Vice President still refuse to even travel there; it is “out of sight, out of mind” for them.

As the ACLJ has repeatedly pointed out, the porous border is also a national security concern.  At the moment, the flood of people crossing the border illegally is the chief national security threat we face as a nation, in my opinion.  We have other adversaries.  There are other real threats in the world.  We are vigilant in watching adversaries like Iran or North Korea; but presently, neither of them pose such an imminent threat as those crossing our border.  We are in deep denial, officially, as to the genuine threat we face at the southern border.  It is a true existential threat, as numerous people have been apprehended at the border who are on terrorist watch lists and who would like for us to cease to exist–the definition of an existential threat.  The people encountered on the border are not only from Central and South America.  Hundreds of illegal immigrants have been caught who are from Africa, the Middle East, and Asia.

This was vividly brought to America’s attention recently on May 24 when a man from Iraq was arrested for aiding and abetting a plot to kill former President George W. Bush.  Shihab Ahmed Shihab Shihab was arrested in Columbus, Ohio.  Shihab was facilitating a plot to kill President Bush by smuggling four additional men from Iraq across the border in Texas, where President Bush now lives.  Shihab’s motive was revenge for deaths in Iraq during Operation Iraqi Freedom.  Shihab traveled to Dallas last February to conduct surveillance on multiple locations associated with the 43rd President.

Shihab came to the United States on a tourist visa in 2020.  Like so many other foreign nationals who are gaming our immigration system and using our lax immigration policies against us, he then asked for asylum; his request is still pending.  According to the Department of Justice, the Iraqi exchanged money with other individuals in his plans to sneak his fellow-terrorists across the border and discussed acquiring weapons and vehicles to carry out the assassination.

This comes on the heels of two other events.  First, the U.S. sanctioned several ISIS facilitators in Syria and Turkey last week in an attempt to “expose and disrupt” the network of violent extremists.  Secretary of State Blinken stated that by designating the people for sanctions, the Administration seeks to “expose and disrupt an international ISIS facilitation network that has financed ISIS recruitment . . . .”  Secondly, all of this is taking place while over 200,000 people a month are apprehended at the border—some 6,500 each day.

But alarmingly, we also know that terrorists—like Shihab and his comrades—do not turn themselves in to Border Patrol agents as many illegal immigrants do who are pursuing the legal process.  People who are planning terrorist attacks try to avoid being caught.  While the U.S. caught 42 individuals who are on lists of terrorists over the past year, the Terrorist Screening Database (TSDB), we literally do not know how many others were not apprehended; they were successful in avoiding Border Patrol agents and slipped into our country.  Again, people on the TSDB try NOT to be apprehended by our border agents.  Astonishingly, when questioned by Members of Congress about terrorists attempting to cross the border, DHS Secretary Mayorkas said, “We’ve got a handle on this.”

Following the horrible attacks on America on 9/11, the commission charged with investigating the largest terror attack ever on American soil reported that part of what happened that day on the part of America and Americans was a collective “failure of imagination.”  We simply could not imagine that a group of terrorists would go to all the trouble of coming to the U.S., living among us, taking flight lessons, coordinating their efforts at multiple U.S. airports on the same September morning, and using jetliners as weapons of mass destruction.

Our imagination is failing us again.  The Biden Administration fails to take border security seriously.  Likely, those in the Administration charged with guarding our borders and protecting Americans truly do not believe that we are at risk with a border that can be crossed by merely walking across or wading a river.  They fail to grasp that the drug cartels in Mexico, running the smuggling operations, are facilitating people who want to cross in the U.S. in order to wreak violence.  In their policies, they make no distinction between those who seek a better life in America (albeit illegally) and those who are recruited, trained, and supplied so that they might attack America again.  They refuse to be concerned, to say nothing of alarmed, that they do not actually know who—and how many—come to America whose intentions are unknown.

We must demand more.  The Biden Administration must change course and secure the border.  We can still be compassionate and welcome those in need and yet have a secure border with orderly entry points only and a legitimate system to process those coming to our country.  It is not immoral or inhumane to have a secure border.  It is immoral and inhumane to turn a blind eye to what is happening on the border.  It is immoral and inhumane to not do everything in our power to stop drug and human trafficking—and to quit inadvertently facilitating the scourge of sex trafficking where most of the victims are young girls in their teens.  It is also immoral and inhumane—to say nothing of the apex of denial—to not take our national security seriously.  An open border is an invitation to those who would do us harm.