by Todd Bensman
AUSTIN, Texas — A Fox News report that Texas state troopers caught an Iranian in the trunk of a smuggler’s car who was on the FBI’s terrorism watch list briefly diverted America’s attention to the border crisis, until the Department of Homeland Security retorted that the illegal immigrant was actually not on the list.
That’s good news. But, on or off any list, Iranians in smuggler car trunks seeking to evade Border Patrol and disappear into America is always bad news for U.S. national security. This incident showcases a threat that is very much distinct from absorption problems that, for instance, involve illegal immigrants bankrupting U.S. health care systems and evictions from fancy New York hotels of entitled illegal immigrant freeloaders.
The car-trunk Iranian highlights that intercontinental human smuggling networks connect the most adversarial nations in the world to the crumbled southern border defenses along established routes, as detailed in my recent book “America’s Covert Border War, the Untold Story of the Nation’s Battle to Prevent Jihadist Infiltration” and also in my forthcoming book, Overrun, How Joe Biden Unleashed the Greatest Border Crisis in U.S. History.