U.S. SECURITY Reports raise terrorist alerts at Mexican border

Evidence shows Al-Qaida's interest in established smuggling networks.
LOS ANGELES TIMES
SAN DIEGO -- Growing fears that Al-Qaida emissaries are looking to tap into well-worn smuggling routes along the 2,000-mile Mexican border have led to a security crackdown in recent months and new levels of official cross-border cooperation, U.S. and Mexican law enforcement officials say.
Officials say they have no hard evidence of an Al-Qaida presence in Mexico. But intelligence reports, security alerts and other recent encounters have raised fresh concern that terrorists view America's porous southern border as a window of opportunity.
"We are seeing a pattern of terrorist suspects exploring opportunities to get hold of Mexican passports and documents and infiltrating into the U.S. through Mexico," said Magnus Ranstorp, director of the Center for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.
Launching pad
A major concern, he said, is that terrorists will use South America as a launching pad to slip into Mexico and ultimately the United States, using smuggling rings or forged documents. Counterterrorism officials said that Islamic terrorist groups have long used the tri-border area of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay as a base for fund raising and recruiting.
U.S. counterterrorism officials have long viewed the Canadian border with concern. It was at a Port Angeles, Wash., border crossing in December 1999 that agents arrested Ahmed Ressam, who was subsequently convicted of plotting with Al-Qaida to bomb Los Angeles International Airport.
Canada has large pockets of Middle Easterners and, compared with Mexico, the border to the north had never been heavily guarded against illegal immigrants and drug smugglers.
9/11 mastermind
But according to staff members of the commission investigating the 9/11 attacks on the United States, accused mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed had a keen interest in smuggling Al-Qaida operatives across the Mexican border. Investigators were not able to determine whether he succeeded.
A study of border security released by the commission last month warns of links between human smugglers and terrorists. Among other concerns, the staff report cites "uncorroborated law enforcement reports suggesting that associates of Al-Qaida used smugglers in Latin America to travel through the region in 2002 before traveling onward to the United States."
Despite extensive surveillance, the border remains porous because of the stretches of desert it crosses and Mexico's established smuggling networks. Some Mexican cities, including Tijuana, have sizable Arab populations, giving rise to a recent history of illegal transit of Middle Easterners across the border.
Several episodes in recent months have raised concerns, though none has been confirmed to be terrorist-related.
Suspect sighted
Earlier this year, U.S. authorities received information that Saudi-born terrorism suspect Adnan G. el Shukrijumah had been sighted in Honduras. Shukrijumah is believed to have been an Al-Qaida surveillance expert who in 2001 helped case the New York Stock Exchange as a possible terrorist target.
After an investigation failed to turn up evidence that he had been in Honduras, U.S. officials enlisted the help of Mexican officials.
"We have no objective evidence to confirm that he is in Mexico, but the alert was sounded, and we are looking for him," Jose Luis Santiago Vasconcelos, chief of Mexico's task force on organized crime, told reporters. "It is difficult to find someone who, it seems, is a ghost."
In August, U.S. authorities issued an alert for a Middle Eastern man who paid what officials said was an unusually large amount of money to be smuggled into the United States near the border town of Tecate, Mexico. He was last seen getting into a waiting black pickup and driving off into the night. Authorities have declined to release further information, or say how they learned how much he paid to be smuggled into the United States.
Intriguing case
Of all the leads about the smuggling of potential terrorists from Mexico into the United States, the most intriguing may be the case of a young Lebanese man who was dropped off at a San Diego-area hospital in June 2002.
The man, near death, showed signs of radiation poisoning, suggesting work with a radiological "dirty bomb." In the end, the radiation symptoms were discounted and the man died of undetermined causes.
But the case led to the arrest of the owner of a Lebanese restaurant in Tijuana who last year was convicted of operating a smuggling ring, in league with a Mexican diplomat based in Lebanon. U.S. officials estimated that he arranged for the illegal entry of 80 to 200 Arabs into the United States over a period of months.
Although police have not detained any terrorist suspects trying to enter the United States from Mexico, a recent Immigration and Customs Enforcement memorandum obtained by the Los Angeles Times says that the Drug Enforcement Administration developed intelligence that Al-Qaida operatives have been in contact with human and drug smuggling rings in Mexico to gain entry into the United States. Homeland Security officials said they had been unable to confirm the information but take it seriously.