FBI WARNS OF SPECIAL INTEREST ALIENS

It was my opinion that the United States, after 9/11, should have immediately taken measures to protect and secure our borders, while we wrestled with what I knew would be protracted legal and political debates on immigration (both legal and illegal); and at the same time, make a concerted effort to do some serious house cleaning by trying to get some kind of a handle on people already in this country with expired student visas and the like. And during this time frame, we also needed to co-ordinate data bases between various agencies, and share information to ensure everyone was on the same page. To do otherwise was assinine.

But of course, this is exactly the route we took. Now 3 1/2 years after 9/11, we have implemented the Patriot Act after much wrangling and to the dismay of many. However, some of the key parts to the Patriot Act will expire, we still have stories of non-cooperation between agencies, and we still have alarming numbers of illegals in this country with no knowledge of where they are.

And our borders are still like sieves.

And now this from Yahoo News:
FBI Warns of 'Special Interest' Aliens

White House - AP Cabinet & State
By MARK SHERMAN, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - FBI (news - web sites)
"Director Robert Mueller told Congress on Tuesday that people from countries with ties to al-Qaida have crossed into the United States from Mexico, using false identities."

FBI Director Robert Mueller testified: "We are concerned, Homeland Security is concerned about special interest aliens entering the United States," Mueller said, using a term for people from countries where al-Qaida is known to be active.

Under persistent questioning from Rep. John Culberson, R-Texas, Mueller said he was aware of one route that takes people to Brazil, where they assume false identities, and then to Mexico before crossing the U.S. border.

He also said that in some instances people with Middle Eastern names have adopted Hispanic last names before trying to get into the United States. "

Captain Ed at Captains' Quarters blogs:

"Our inability to secure our Southern border amounts to the single most embarassing and preventable security lapse since 9/11. This has little to do with the FBI but with an administration and Congress that believes it needs a comprehensive solution to illegal immigration before it can act to secure the border. This thinking flies in the face of our other post-9/11 strategies, where we have avoided attacking everyone at once in favor of tactically playing out our strategy in one hot theater at a time.

We need to come up with a grand strategy for dealing with the immigrants already here, but we must act immediately to secure the border. The rest can wait until later. The analysis paralysis we have accepted for the past decade or more will eventually kill us. In fact, it may already have, and we have yet to discover it."

I couldn't agree more Captain.