President Trump was right. Nestled in the protective horde of migrants who marched for the U.S. border beginning October 12 might well be an Islamic terrorist.
The proof lies in the conviction and deportation of a Pakistani who smuggled illegal aliens into the United States through South and Central America.
Despite his high-sounding name, Sharafat Ali Khan, 33, was not a billionaire oil potentate. He was, as Immigrations and Customs Enforcement put it, “the Brazilian-based facilitator of the alien smuggling organization.”
Officials say some of the illegals he smuggled might well have been terrorists.
Terror Ties
Packing the Pakistani off to Pakistan was no easy job.
In March 2014, the FBI and ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations squad began probing an illegal-alien smuggling outfit in South and Central America. But the crime gang’s goal wasn’t bringing in poor Central Americans. Rather, its job was smuggling illegal aliens from Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan, through South and Central America, into the United States.
“From 2014 to 2016, upwards of 100 people arrested by HSI and the FBI identified Khan as their smuggler,” ICE reported. “The investigation revealed that Khan and his co-conspirators charged each alien between $3,000 and $15,000 to facilitate their travel to the United States.”
But that’s not the scary thing. This is: “Several of the individuals smuggled by Khan’s organization had suspected ties to terrorist organizations.”
How many of the illegals were tied to terrorists ICE did not say. Nor did ICE name the terrorist organizations.
But here’s the question: Why wouldn’t a terrorist group use Khan, and then the migrant horde, to surreptitiously inoculate the United States with one or more of its murderous bacilli?
Search and Arrest
Whatever the answer to those questions, ICE did report one good thing. Brazil and Pakistani authorities helped collar Khan. The country’s federales searched his home on June 1.
Next day, the Pakistani criminal flew the coop and went back home. On June 3, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia charged him with “conspiracy to encourage or induce an alien to enter the United States for financial gain.” Helpful authorities in Pakistan collared Khan at Hamad International Airport in Doha.
In April of last year, the federal district court ordered Khan removed, and in October, the court convicted him of “conspiracy to defraud the United States, and encourage or induce an alien for commercial advantage or private financial gain.” The court sentenced him to 31 months’ imprisonment with credit for time served. Just after Christmas, ERO Philadelphia filed a detainer with the facility in which he was jailed. That facility turned him over to ERO in August. ERO kept him locked up until last week,
ICE turned him over to the Pakistanis on December 19.
Again, Trump Was Right
The media viciously attacked President Trump when he said terrorists were among the migrant horde marching for the U.S. border with Mexico in October and November.
The New York Times claimed Trump retailed “Evidence-Free Claims About the Migrant Caravan,” as the headline over one story put it. Another story purported to show, as another headline claimed, “How Trump-Fed Conspiracy Theories About Migrant Caravan Intersect With Deadly Hatred.”
An opinion column from an “Army veteran” in USA Today boldly and falsely stated, in its first tendentious sentence, that “The migrant caravan is not a threat.” The writer accused the president of “lying in order to frighten voters” before the midterm elections in November.
Well, the deportation of the Pakistani shows that what Trump had warned about had almost certainly been correct.
As does a report from the Center for Immigration Studies released just after Thanksgiving. Since 2001, CIS reported, “15 migrants with credibly suspected or confirmed terrorism ties who were encountered at the southern border after smuggling through Latin America, or who were encountered while presumably en route.”
The report named 14 of them.
Illegal aliens routinely and falsely claim asylum. Then border authorities release them into the country pending the outcome of a hearing about their claims.
Who’s to say one of them wasn’t a terrorist?
Photo: Stadtratte/iStock/Getty Images Plus
