WASHINGTON, August 21 (RIA Novosti) - The United States should be thinking about a future terrorist attack on American soil, and that threat coming from an insecure US-Mexican border, according to Texas governor and former Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry who spoke Thursday at a National Review event on border security.
“There’s the obvious great concern that because of the condition of the border... that individuals from IS or other terrorist states could be, and I think it’s a very real possibility that they may have already used that,” Rick Perry said referring to Islamic State terrorists who could use the southern border to enter the United States.
Saying Americans have fallen into a “false sense of security,” the governor of the southern Texas state warned that events in Syria and Iraq, “should have us thinking about the possibility of another terrorist attack in this country.”
Currently US Border Patrol is responsible for patrolling 6,000 miles of land borders, and 2,000 miles of coastal waters surrounding the entire country. For the year 2013, Border Patrol reported that over 414,000 illegals were apprehended at southwest border crossings alone.
However, those apprehensions are only a fraction of the total number of illegal border crossings that occur. The greatest national security concern with these illegal crossings is the importing of transnational criminal networks, drug cartels, human trafficking, and terrorism.
Asked by a former Border Patrol official whether terrorists were using the US-Mexico border, Perry responded, “Certainly there is a great concern that the border between the United States and Mexico is unsecure.”
The governor asserted the audience that, “We have seen historic, high levels of individuals from countries with terrorist ties over the last months,” and cited three Ukrainians with terrorist ties who were apprehended within the past 60 days in a ranch in west Texas.
Islamic State, formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS), is a radical Sunni group that had been fighting in Syria before launching an offensive in Iraq in June.
On Tuesday, the IS posted a video in the Internet that allegedly showed the beheading of James Wright Foley, a US journalist, in what the insurgents said was in retaliation for US airstrikes on IS targets in Iraq. The militants are believed to be holding more hostages who are at risk of being slaughtered.
