Many Americans might have felt surprised by recent news that U.S. Border Patrol in Arizona caught 11 Iranian migrants who crossed the southern border from Mexico.
But this crossing is not surprising in one insular quarter: an international cadre of intelligence and law enforcement officers who work on this chronically misunderstood threat problem for the American homeland security establishment. For them, southern border crossings by Iranians, as well as by migrant travelers from other countries of terrorism concern, like Syria, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia, trigger an almost routine response the public never sees.
My new book, America’s Covert Border War, The Untold Story of the Nation’s Battle to Prevent Jihadist Infiltration, reveals these responses as part of a hidden American counterterror effort that has long regarded this human traffic as a distinct national security border threat and which has worked to neutralize individuals who might show up to the border see