"'Osama's People' Smuggled Into U.S.?"

From this:

Court documents in a Brownsville, Texas drug-smuggling case cite a wiretapped telephone conversation by one of the smugglers who said that "Osama's people" are ready to be transported across the Mexican border into the U.S.

The Brownsville Herald reported earlier this week ["Infiltration from the south feared"]:

"[Paperwork in the case] contains details of a December 2004 incident in which [one smuggler] tried to secure transportation for 20 Middle Eastern 'terrorists' waiting to enter the United States from Monterrey, Chiapas and Puebla in Mexico.

"Recorded telephone conversations authorized under the U.S. Patriot Act and a court order captured the [suspect] referring to the 20 men as 'gente de Osama.'" ["Osama's people"]

..."During a Jan. 5, 2005, telephone conversation, [the smuggling suspect] described the men as 'Iraqis,' ages 25 to 33, who were willing to pay $8,000 for transportation past Border Patrol checkpoints in South Texas and into the U.S. interior.

"[The suspect] mentioned that eight of the men were coming to Progreso, northwest of Brownsville. He said they were 'dangerous' and 'really bad people.' They carried guns and made the smuggler that was helping them 'afraid.'"

FBI officials declined to comment further on the case. But one federal law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity told the paper that the men labeled "terrorists" turned out to be illegal aliens from a "nation of concern."

The FBI declined to say whether "Osama's people" made it across the border or if authorities had apprehended them.

See also this roundup of recent infiltration reports:

In a December 4 incident that received scant media attention, a Bangladeshi Muslim man named Fakhrul Islam was among a group of 13 illegal aliens arrested near Brownsville, Texas, just across the border from Mexico. Border Patrol agents have said that one of the men detained along with Islam was a member of Mara Salvatrucha, a violent Salvadoran criminal gang with more than 300,000 members across Central and North America, including powerful enterprises in several major U.S. cities.

That report apparently appeared in a newspaper called La Jornada.

Immigration_terror · Sun, 01/22/2006 - 03:24 · · Importance: 4