How many illegal alien terrorists
are still on the loose?
Monday, September 28, 2009
By Carl Braun
Examiner.com
Hosam Maher Husein Smadi
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The arrest of Hosam Maher Husein Smadi in an alleged plot to blow up a Dallas skyscraper and potentially kill thousands of people, raises the issue once again: How many illegal alien terrorists are still on the loose?Smadi, a 19-year-old Jordanian who overstayed his Visa for schooling was captured in an FBI sting operation as he flipped the switch to a “bomb” he thought was going to destroy the 60 story building. Fortunately for us, and the buildings occupants, the bomb, a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device or VBIED was a fake and the hapless would be terrorist was immediately taken into custody. His father of course said he was a good boy and definitely not a terrorist. His brother was also arrested. Probably just a big mistake I'm sure.
How did he get here in the first place? Well, this one time petty criminal was given a student VISA to attend high school in Santa Clara CA. He did not however make it there, choosing instead to work at a Shell station in Italy, TX a suburb of Dallas. FBI agents recruited him in a chat room frequented by Islamic Jihadists bent on the violent demise of the evil west.
As of January, there were just over one million active foreign students, exchange visitors, and their dependents in the United States. About 20,000 are enrolled in high school level programs while others attend any kind of school imaginable, especially aviation programs. If a student doesn’t show up for the schooling, the institution is supposed to notify a special unit at ICE. Since 2003, this has been done 550,000 times with just 3,196 arrests. That is a .0058% success rate for the feds with 546,804 “students” wandering freely in our society…illegally.
That hasn’t stopped the State Department from issuing 767,266 student visa’s in 2008, a 46% increase since 2004 mostly due to heavy lobbying by educational institutions.
What can our government do to protect us against the Smadi’s of the world? It could start by doing a better job of screening the candidates (our boy Smadi reportedly had a minor criminal record in Jordan). It could stop issuing these student visa’s like they were mini baseball cards in a crackerjack box. It could help prevent them from getting employment by making E-verify a reality system-wide and it could work to improve its record of enforcement. Maybe double it and get it up to 1% or so.
How many illegal alien terrorists are out there? May thousands I’m afraid and they only have to be successful once while we must be effective in stopping them 100% of the time. We got lucky with this one. How much longer can our good string of luck run?
Source: www.CIS.org
Carl Braun is an analyst for the Homeland Security Policy Institute Group and he's logged 5,000-plus hours on the border. He has written several books including his most recent on Border Insecurity, “Above All Else”
. Contact Carl at Carl.Braun@BPAUX.org.
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