My column in today’s Marietta Daily Journal ( Click here to see MDJ)

I have added some hyperlinks to educate the reader.

Key to preventing future terror fiasco is tighter borders

D.A. King
Columnist

“Spanish and Islamic terrorist groups are using Mexico as a refuge“

– Former Mexican National Security Adviser and Mexican Ambassador to the United Nations Alfredo Aguilar Zinser, May 2001

“Members of Hezbollah have already entered the United States across the Southwest border.”

– A Finding from a “A Line in the Sand: Confronting the Threat at the Southwest Border,” a 2006 U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security report.

Using the very politically incorrect “enforcement-only” approach, earlier this week, American law enforcement officers apprehended six Islamic crazies who were planning an attack on Ft. Dix, a U.S. Army base in New Jersey.

“Today we dodged a bullet,” was a comment from FBI Agent J.P. Weis on the arrests of the group that included at least three illegal aliens – brothers – who had been living in the U.S. for more than 20 years. Several of those arrested made it clear that they were ready to “kill and die in the name of Allah.”

According to Fox News reports, the illegal aliens, the brothers Duka, entered the U.S. illegally near Brownsville, Texas in 1984, two years before the “one time” amnesty of 1986.

This all-too-close brush with the horror of Americans being murdered in their own country by illegal aliens – again – will no doubt be discussed, if it is at all, as an “immigration” issue and pointed to as proof that “our immigration system is broken” by dishonest pundits, the open borders/illegal alien lobby and elected officials who are desperately looking for a way to grant a path to legalization for the more than 20 million illegal aliens in our country. Again.

It should be a wake-up call to us all that “the immigration issue” is clearly a national security issue and that securing American borders should not be a trigger for anything other than a pathway to re-election for those who have sworn to protect us. To most Americans, this one included, this represents common sense.

In an effort to distract the American public from the fact that illegal immigration should have ceased after Sept. 11, 2001, many in Congress hope that we will overlook the fact that protecting American borders is not a component of immigration reform, but a duty of office. And that any legislation aimed at doing so will merely be another bill that says our leaders must obey the law.

For years, news stories on America’s border security crisis have been intentionally focused on the mostly Mexican illegals who are coming into the United States because they can make more money here than in their own corrupt nation – the “cheap” labor to which cost-cutting employers have grown addicted.

What is not reported is that hundreds of illegal aliens who come from countries with known terrorist ties are routinely apprehended by Border Patrol agents on the border with Mexico. And that we only catch a fraction of the total of illegal crossers.

What is not reported is that we must stop all illegal entries into the U.S. – period.

The last thing the open-borders lobby wants is for anyone to point to the obvious homeland security dangers involved in illegal immigration.

Don’t expect the 2006 warning from Zapata County, Texas Sheriff Sigifredo Gonzalez to be part of the debate on “Comprehensive Immigration Reform” in the U.S. Congress when amnesty-again is presented – again – as a solution to our national security problems at our borders.

Gonzalez, who heads the Texas Sheriff’s Border Coalition, said a growing number of suspected incursions and violence aimed at the area’s law enforcement officers is making the border “a pretty dangerous place.” Gonzalez told the House Homeland Security Committee in 2006 that, “If smugglers can bring in tons of marijuana and cocaine – and can smuggle 20 to 30 persons, one can just imagine how easy it would be to bring in two or three terrorists or their weapons of mass destruction.”

Indeed.

The U.S. Senate will take up “immigration” again as soon as next week.

Americans looking for a better life should be watchful to see which of the senators has the courage to come out of the shadows and say out loud that the pro-American solution to the crisis that threatens the survival of the republic is to secure the borders – at any cost – and to demand enthusiastic enforcement of the laws already passed. Period.

They may also want to point out that immigrants, by definition, have no need for legalization and do not require amnesty.

We’ll be watching.

D.A. King is president of the Marietta-based Dustin Inman Society, a coalition dedicated to educating the public on the consequences of illegal immigration.