By: Don Winslow
Author of “The Cartel”
While the dominant Sinaloa Cartel might be reluctant to risk American retaliation by smuggling terrorists, the lesser cartels, with little to lose, will be tempted. Human trafficking now makes up almost 30% of one such cartel’s income; it’s not a huge leap from smuggling undocumented workers to trafficking terrorists.
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The cartels are motivated by profit – drug money or terrorist money is the same to them, and these sophisticated tunnels, with railroad tracks, air-conditioning, elevators, and dormitories are perfect clandestine entry points for terrorists.
Politicians and Donald Trump keep talking about building a wall that stretches the entire 2,000-mile land border with Mexico. It doesn’t matter how high a wall you build if the traffickers can tunnel under it. Every few months we discover a new tunnel under the Mexican-American border, mostly in the Tijuana-San Diego area.
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Since the early 1990’s they’ve been used to smuggle drugs, but how long will it be before they’re used to transport terrorists into the United States?
Congress’s tough-on-crime stance makes us soft on border security. The Mexican drug cartels are more sophisticated and wealthier than the jihadists, already have a presence in 230 American cities, and have carried out executions inside the United States.
The cartels were running the ISIS playbook—decapitations, immolations, videos, social media—ten years ago.
There is a very direct connection between the Mexican cartels and ISIS in the sense of the atrocities they carry out, and largely ISIS learned this behavior from the cartels.
There are also credible reports that ISIS considers the Mexican border to be vulnerable. Right now it’s just a threat, but how long will it be before the threat is real?
By: Don Winslow
Author of “The Cartel”
