The terror-immigration connection

$4,000 fee for passage
Maksoud, a liquor distributor, traveled from Lebanon to Mexico on a legal visa in late 2000, he told investigators in Mexican court documents. Two compatriots passed along Boughader’s name for help crossing the U.S. border.

Boughader informed his newest client the fee would be $2,000 up front, plus another $2,000 once Maksoud was in the States. In January 2001, Maksoud was taken to a house on the Mexican side where migrants of “different nationalities” were awaiting passage, he told investigators. One morning, he was crammed into the trunk of a vehicle and driven through the border port of entry.

Other people-couriers, including convicted smuggler Mohammed Hussein Assadi, use altered passports to fly clients to the United States. Assadi schooled his Iraqi customers to carry nothing identifying them as Arab. He advised one migrant to shave his mustache, still another to get a “European” haircut, U.S. court records showed.

Central and South America are popular transit points. Assadi, an Iranian, worked from Ecuador.
Bribery is also common. Boughader’s clients told U.S. and Mexican investigators they paid thousands to obtain fraudulent visas from Mexico’s consular office in Beirut.

Illegal immigrants from every continent
Former U.S. immigration supervisor Maximiano Ramos admitted taking $12,500 to smuggle immigrants from the Philippines, home of the al-Qaida-linked militant group Abu Sayyaf. From 1996 to 2002, at least 40 migrants were diverted from connecting flights at Los Angeles International Airport and escorted out by security guards while Ramos was on duty.

Linda Sesi, an assistant ombudsman for the city of Detroit, is awaiting trial on charges of conspiring with four others to smuggle more than 200 migrants from Iraq, Jordan and other Middle Eastern countries into the United States from 2001 until last September.

Some say human smuggling is too risky to be used by terror operatives. But a former Sept. 11 commission counsel, Janice Kephart, said smuggling already is a chosen transportation mode for such groups.

Intelligence suggests that since 1999 human smugglers have facilitated the travel of terrorists associated with more than a dozen groups, according to the Sept. 11 commission travel report that Kephart helped write.

Smugglers eagerly fill gaps left by arrests
Terrorist groups, including al-Qaida, “use human smugglers and document forgers to a great extent,” Kephart said. “It only makes sense that they would transfer that to infiltrate the United States.”

Dismantling groups smuggling people from countries with terrorist ties is a priority, said John Torres, ICE’s deputy assistant director for smuggling. But often when one smuggler is busted another eagerly fills his shoes.

Following Boughader’s arrest, smuggling of Lebanese through Tijuana ceased for several months, ICE investigator Ramon Romo said in court documents filed in Mexico. Then intelligence in April 2003 revealed that five members of Hezbollah were preparing to cross the border, Romo stated. Mexican authorities made some arrests.

Others have made it through.   Kourani entered the United States via the Lebanon-Tijuana pipeline, paying $3,000 in Beirut to get a Mexican visa, according to court documents. On Feb. 4, 2001, he and another man were smuggled into California in the hidden compartment of a vehicle.

Border 'still easy to cross'
Last month, Kourani was sentenced to 4½ years in prison for conspiring to provide material support to a terrorist group.

Boughader acknowledged transporting a Lebanese man who worked at al-Manar, a global satellite television network owned and operated by Hezbollah and included on the U.S. State Department’s Terror Exclusion List.

“I regret that what I was doing is against the law,” said Boughader, a Mexican of Lebanese descent, “but I don’t regret what I did to help people.”

People are still getting such help.

“The checks they do at the border are still very bad,” Boughader said, “because, regardless of everything, it is still easy to cross.”

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