A report from Judicial Watch posted on the Free Republic forum on August 11 cited admissions made by Erick Jamal Hendricks (shown), who was arrested in Ohio on August 4 and charged with conspiring to provide material support to ISIS. Hendricks, noted the report, created a sleeper cell with at least 10 members, according to the Department of Justice (DOJ). He claims that some of his jihadist “brothers” are based just south of the U.S. border in Mexico, confirming earlier reports that terrorists have set up shop near Ciudad Juarez.
“Hendricks allegedly told CW-1 [another ISIS operative] that he ‘needed people’ and wanted to meet in person; that there were several ‘brothers’ located in Texas and Mexico; that he was attempting to ‘get brothers to meet face to face;’ and that he wanted ‘to get brothers to train together,’ ” Judicial Watch quoted a DOJ announcement.
Judicial Watch reported:
The Hendricks case points to a broader issue of, not only homegrown terrorism, but the immense threat along the southern border. Islamic terrorists are training in southern border towns near American cities and have joined forces with Mexican drug cartels to infiltrate the United States. Judicial Watch has investigated this national security crisis for years and interviewed local, state and federal law enforcement officials as well as military sources on both sides of the border. Besides exposing ISIS camps just miles from Texas, Judicial Watch has verified that Mexican drug cartels are smuggling foreigners from countries with terrorist links to stash areas in a rural Texas town called Acala. Judicial Watch also uncovered a massive FBI scandal involving a narco-terror ringleader with ties to ISIS and Mexican drug cartels. As part of the FBI cover-up the agency facilitated the ringleader’s release from a Chicago jail last year.
An August 4 press statement released by the DOJ said that Hendricks “tried to recruit people to train together and conduct terrorist attacks in the United States on behalf of ISIL [ISIS], according to a criminal complaint unsealed today in U.S. District Court in the Northern District of Ohio.”
Some of the material quoted from the criminal complaint revealed that Hendricks had a very violent agenda planned. It read, in part:
According to the complaint, on April 16, 2015, Hendricks instructed UCE-1 [an undercover FBI employee] to download the document “GPS for the Ghuraba in the U.S.”, which included a section entitled “Final Advice” which advocated that “brothers and sisters” should not allow themselves to go to jail. This section also allegedly encouraged Muslims to die as a “Shaheed” (martyr), to “Boobie trap your homes,” to “lay in wait for them” and to “never leave your home without your AK-47 or M16.” According to the complaint, Hendricks also directed UCE-1 to communicate online with other people and stated “It’s hard to sift through brothers;” “Allah chooses only the few;” and “Everyday I do this day in and day out.”
A report posted by The New American in May, noted that another ISIS operative, Shaykh Mahmood Omar Khabir, has reportedly been training militants near Ciudad Juarez, Mexico (across the Rio Grande from El Paso) for the past year, and has bragged about his terrorist activities in an Italian newspaper.
In the article appearing on April 22 in the Italian paper il Giornale, Khabir was quoted as bragging that the U.S.-Mexican border is so unsecured that he “could get in with a handful of men, and kill thousands of people in Texas or in Arizona in the space of a few hours.”
The New American article in May quoted from Judicial Watch’s April 26 report, which first broke the story about Khabir:
Among the jihadists that travel back and forth through the porous southern border is a Kuwaiti named Shaykh Mahmood Omar Khabir, an ISIS operative who lives in the Mexican state of Chihuahua not far from El Paso, Texas. Khabir trained hundreds of Al Qaeda fighters in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Yemen and has lived in Mexico for more than a year, according to information provided by JW’s [Judicial Watch’s] government source.
We noted in our article in June how government documents obtained by Representative Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) revealed that a lengthy route extending from Brazil to the U.S.-Mexican border had been used to transport at least a dozen Middle Eastern aliens into the United States and that among these aliens was an Afghani man with links to the Taliban. Homeland Security officials said the man has family ties to the Taliban and was “involved in a plot to conduct an attack in the U.S. and/or Canada.”
We reported in another article last January that two Pakistani nationals who had been linked to terrorism were apprehended by U.S. Border Patrol (USBP) agents south of San Diego and just north of the Mexican border last September.
As we noted, one lesson that can be learned from the ease with which these Pakistani men crossed our border into California — and also how easily Palestinians, other Pakistanis, and an Afghan man crossed into Arizona — is that adequate border security does not exist. If we cannot police our borders, then our ability to protect ourselves from terrorists attacks is also non-existent.
We also noted that the bombings that killed 34 people in Brussels on March 22 and the bombings and shootings that killed 130 people in Paris last November should serve to warn Americans about the potential effects of allowing terrorists to enter a country. Since then, other terrorist attacks for which ISIS has claimed responsibility have taken place in Europe, including one on July 24, when Mohammad Daleel, a Syrian refugee who pledged allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, leader of ISIS, blew himself up outside a wine bar in Ansbach, Germany, killing himself and injuring 15 people.
If we do not correct the obvious holes in our border security, it will be only a matter of time before tragic episodes such as occurred across Europe take place on our soil. We have been lucky so far, but our luck will not last indefinitely.
Related articles:
Smuggling Network Brings Aliens With Terrorist Ties Across U.S. Border
Mexican Cartels Moving Terrorists Across Southern U.S. Border
Terrorist Smuggling Into U.S. a Real Concern
Pakistanis With Terrorism Ties Caught After Crossing U.S.-Mexican Border
Border Patrol: Obama Has “No Intention” of Deporting Illegals
