Another Reason to Get Serious About Our Unguarded Border

 

IBDEditorials.com

Demonstrators carry Islamic State flags through the streets of Mosul, Iraq, on June 16, 2014. AP 

National Security: Credible reports have surfaced for the second time of an Islamic State training camp at the U.S. border near Texas. When will the Obama administration get serious about investigating the issue?

Judicial Watch reports that two Mexican officials — a field grade military officer and a federal police officer — have anonymously told them that IS terrorists have set up a camp outside Juarez, in Mexico's Chihuahua state, in a region eight miles from the U.S. border known as "Anapra."

Mexican officials deny it, U.S. law enforcement agencies more tentatively call it "unsubstantiated." But it underlines that our border is still unguarded even after last summer's human waves of illegal immigration from Central America, significant U.S. interests — from oil installations to the Fort Bliss military base — are vulnerable. Our enemies are still plotting against us.

The Judicial Watch report came with relevant details — such as that recent terrorist Twitter chatter had specifically brought up the idea of infiltrating the U.S. from the south, and that Qurans in Arabic and Urdu and prayer rugs had been found in the area, and that Mexican police had recovered "plans" for Fort Bliss, suggesting potential for an attack.

Combine that with last summer's demonstration by activist James O'Keefe that the western Texas border is so porous that even a guy with an Osama bin Laden mask could cross with impunity. We're open to attack.

On the downside, there are still no photographs, satellite or otherwise, of any camp. Nor is there corroborative evidence of ties between Islamic State and the Juarez drug cartel, which controls Mexico's border areas. Anonymous accusers are par in the region, given the cartels' habit of murdering those it doesn't like.

But it remains worth looking into, rather than downplaying it in the knee-jerk manner seen so far.

The left has accused Judicial Watch of a political agenda for reporting the camps — even though it it seemed to be a follow-up to Homeland Security congressional testimony last September. Fact is, those who refuse even to admit there may be a problem are the real ones with a politicized agenda.

As the mayor who didn't want swimmers cleared from the beach in the face of a prowling shark in "Jaws" understood, to his peril, there are economic interests at stake, both in Juarez and El Paso.

From Washington and Mexico City, there remain many with a vested interest in exporting as many illegals to the U.S. as possible across an open border, in the quest for new Democratic Party voters.

It's time Americans demand to know why vested interests in open borders by one party should take precedence over our security. If there are terrorists massing on our border and plotting evil, we need to know.