Counter-Terrorism: The Cuban Pipeline

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April 21, 2010: For the last two months, the United States has been searching for about 300 Somalis that an American, Anthony Joseph Tracy, managed to smuggle into the United States. Tracy did this by making a deal with a Cuban diplomats in Kenya, who got the Somalis visas to visit Cuba, and then arranged for them to fly on to South America, where they were eventually smuggled across the Mexican border into the United States.

Worse, Tracy has admitted he had contacts with al Shabaab, an Islamic terrorist group in Somalis that is openly allied with al Qaeda. The problem here is that the government has not been able to find any of these Somalis. Unless they can find some of them, the courts threaten to release Tracy from custody. The Cubans are not cooperating either. Apparently the other evidence the government has is not that strong, and the judge in the case apparently believes that Tracy is making stuff up. While the Mexican border has long been seen as a likely place for Islamic terrorists to enter the country, little evidence of that ever happening has been unearthed. But Mexico has caught Somalis sneaking into Mexico, and it is believed that some of these Somalis evaded Mexican police and got across the border into the United States. A growing number of non-Mexicans are illegally crossing the border, at lease based on a count of those caught.

 

 

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