Steller: Cross-border terrorism isn’t the realistic threat

[…]

Still, the attraction of combining fears of the border and of terrorism is clear. A significant number of people who try to cross the border illegally from Mexico make it across, even now. Therefore, foreign terrorists who want to hurt the United States could try to get smuggled across to achieve their aims.

The concern goes back, at least, to 1986. An Arizona Daily Star story that year said Cochise County Attorney Alan Polley told a U.S. Senate subcommittee that local officials needed help preventing cross-border terrorism. An FBI official told the same panel there was no significant threat of terrorism at the border.

[…]

Look at the long list of people convicted in the United States of terrorism-related crimes, and what you’ll find is a bunch of American citizens, legal residents or people who arrived on valid visas, not illegal crossers. The Federation of American Scientists has collected the Justice Department’s list of terrorism convictions for years, but only has obtained the convictions through 2011 so far.

[…]

The sad truth is, if foreign terrorist groups want to find someone to attack the United States, there are enough U.S. citizens and legal visitors willing to help them out.

Here’s how University of Texas-El Paso political science professor Gaspare Genna, an expert in North American relations, put it: “It would just be easier for (Islamic State) to recruit someone who is in the United States to carry on these types of activities than to find someone who can maneuver in U.S. society, bring them to Mexico and pay a smuggler.”

[…]

RTWT.