The enemy of my enemy is my friend, as quoted by Sun Tzu, may very well be the most accurate summation of today's terrorist philosophy. As many readers know, Sun Tzu was a Chinese general who according to various sources was a continual strategist. He authored the book called the Thirteen Chapters or better known as The Art of War. Written in the 4th century, this book is perhaps one of the oldest how to military manuscripts known.
Current border control measures utilized by the United States fall prey to this quote. Before continuing with this article, it is important to differentiate between immigration and border control. Immigration has to deal with whom the United States Government allows to stay in this country; while border control is about who is allowed to enter the United States and what policies are applied to achieve regulated border crossings. Border security is a crucial component to National defense
According to recent reports, approximately 850,000 illegal aliens enter the United States per year. Putting this staggering number in perspective highlights the United States vulnerabilities. The number of illegal individuals entering the United States per year equates to the current population of Washington DC or Detroit, Michigan. Illegal immigration is not just occurring by human smugglers, but also intertwined with drug cartels.
It is clear that drug cartels are infiltrating our borders. Cartels have threatened United States law enforcement in Arizona, such that it sparked the comments from United States Homeland Security Secretary, Janet Napolitano. Napolitano issued a warning to drug cartels against violence on United States law enforcement. Cartels and human smugglers wish to enter America's borders driven by desire for economic growth. Cost association with illegal border crossing continues to escalate. In essence, we America, have an enemy; one that desires to enter our borders for economic reasons and is met with resistance. We also have another enemy with a similar goal: terrorist organizations. When these two enemies combine they complement each other's objective of entering the United States. The first enemy, the human traffickers, has historical knowledge of effective border crossing, while the latter has the financial means to supplement the first enemy's goal. Combined, they make a formidable force in this ever-growing and complicated chess game of illegal border crossing.
The greater concern is that enemy number two, the terrorist organization, only has to infiltrate the United States borders with ten or so trained individuals to accomplish its mission of inflicting terror. Ten or so trained individuals, merging with terrorist assets that are already inside the United States, may result in devastating consequences. Case in point is the Mumbai style attacks which occurred in November 2008. Ten trained terrorist attacked various locations in the Indian capitol which yielded a death count of over 170 individuals. The chaos of the attack lasted for three days. After this attack, governments across the globe began to train for similar engagements. Understandably, these attacks, like those in September 11th, took planning and coordination to accomplish, that resulted in achieving the terrorists goals.
Putting this into perspective, imagine ten trained terror individuals intermingled with 850,000 individuals. Law enforcement, regardless of its resources, would have a difficult time in first identifying these individuals and second capturing them. That is equivalent to finding 10 faceless people in the nation's capitol. Mathematically, law enforcement is looking for a population percentage of less than one one-hundredth of a percent in a population of 850,000.
Law enforcement is having problems finding criminals in their jurisdiction who are on their Top Ten wanted list, yet we expect them to be able to find these faceless individuals. This is a very conservative figure which credits border security with only allowing ten terrorist to enter the United States. However, reality is ghastly different. Current head lines of new tunnels being found from Mexico to Southern California are escalating. A recent New York Times articles advises how The authorities have found more than 75 tunnels along the border in the last four years. Illegal border crossing techniques, such as these tunnels, indicate that more than ten terrorist along with contraband can easily enter United States soil at any given time.
In summary, home grown terrorists are a credible threat. Regardless of political views, it must be understood that terrorist will try to exploit America's national border security deficiency. We can no longer accept political rhetoric that contradicts our common sense. History has many examples of feeble responses to obvious threats. It is time to use common sense approaches and not political correctness to rectify this national vulnerability.
Pete Eliadis
Pete Eliadis is an 18-year law enforcement veteran with intense command experience, and is the founder of Intelligence Consulting Partners, LLC (ICP). He has earned a variety of national and regional instructor certificates, as well as academic degrees from international institutions, such as Johns Hopkins University. He has been a consultant in various combative and intelligence fields for many years. The purview of Pete Eliadis? clientele spans federal, state and local governments, as well as the private sector. His company, ICP, prides itself on innovative training with emphasis on intertwining law enforcement and civilian applications. He is nationally published in the arena of mass violence.
