My article from the July 15, 2014 issue of FrontPage magazine:
The Obama Administration’s Homeland Security Hypocrisy
By Matthew Vadum
After years of working hard to comfort America’s terrorist enemies and erase U.S. borders, the nation’s perpetually embattled attorney general is suddenly concerned that Middle Eastern jihadists are working together to create undetectable explosives that could be used to blow up U.S. airliners.
Intelligence reports suggest Islamic terrorists in Yemen and Syria have joined forces to make the stealthy bombs and this development is “more frightening than anything I think I’ve seen as attorney general,” Eric Holder said on ABC’s “This Week.”
The collaboration between Islamist militants in the two Muslim countries is a “deadly combination” of those who have technical skills and “people who have this kind of fervor to give their lives in support of a cause that is directed at the United States and directed at its allies.”
“It’s something that gives us really extreme, extreme concern,” Holder said.
Holder’s comments come as the U.S.Department of Homeland Security announced it was ratcheting up security measures at international airports. Individuals will now be made to demonstrate that their electronic devices such as cellphones and laptop computers are not bombs by turning them on at security checkpoints.
Such measures are “prudent steps that are necessary to protect the flying public,” Holder said.
Yet while Holder pretends to be a responsible adult, at the same time evidence has surfaced that security measures have been all but suspended at U.S. airports for newly arrived illegal immigrants in the southern states.
Breitbart Texas reports that illegals are being allowed to board commercial airliners without valid ID. “The aliens who are getting released on their own recognizance are being allowed to board and travel commercial airliners by simply showing their Notice to Appear forms,” said Hector Garza, a spokesman for Local 2455 of the National Border Patrol Council. (NBPC is the labor union representing about 17,000 Border Patrol agents and support personnel assigned to that law enforcement organization.)
“This is not the CBP [Customs and Border Protection] or another federal agency renting or leasing an aircraft, these are the same planes that the American public uses for domestic travel,” said Garza.
This just adds insult to injury. Not only are we releasing unknown illegal aliens onto American streets, but we are allowing them to travel commercially using paperwork that could easily be reproduced or manipulated on any home computer. The Notice to Appear form has no photo, anyone can make one and manipulate one. They do not have any security features, no watermark, nothing. They are simply printed on standard copy paper based on the information the illegal alien says is the truth.
Added Garza:
We do not know who these people are, we often have to solely rely on who they say they are, where they say they came from, and the history they say they have. We know nothing about most of them, ICE releases them into the American public, and now they are boarding aircraft at will with a simple paper document that anyone can easily alter or reproduce themselves.
Central Americans are not the only people crossing our border and being released. Does anyone actually think that cartels and others criminal or possible terrorist organizations are not taking advantage of the fact that we are having to leave our border wide open while we reassigning the majority of our agents to process family units and minors? Of course this situation is being exploited by such threats.
NBPC Vice President Shawn Moran told Washington, D.C. radio station WMAL’s Larry O’Connor yesterday that the ongoing invasion by illegal aliens is straining Border Patrol resources.
“We don’t normally have these large groups of people trying to surrender to us,” Moran said. “They are tying up officers in the field and we believe this is being orchestrated for the benefit of the drug cartels.”
The Border Patrol has caught plenty of illegal immigrants from countries that the U.S. regards as state sponsors of terrorism, he said, adding he is concerned that terrorists are “trying to fit in with the groups that we’re catching.”
Obama administration officials like Holder are now giving Oscar-worthy performances, posing as public servants deeply worried about the nation’s porous southern border. They are providing political cover for the president who has been trying ever since his January 2009 swearing-in to generate disorder at the border.
President Obama gave a green light to the current wave of illegal immigrants when he indicated he has no interest in enforcing U.S. immigration laws.
Obama has provided executive amnesty and work permits for illegal immigrants covered by the proposed “DREAM Act” that Congress has repeatedly rejected. That legislation, if enacted, would cover individuals who claim to have entered the U.S. as minors under their parents’ guidance.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued a directive in August 2013 expanding that amnesty to illegal immigrant relatives of “DREAM Act” beneficiaries. DHS issued another directive in December 2012 reinforcing the existing policy under which almost all immigration offenses were deemed unenforceable absent a separate criminal conviction.
Throughout all of this, Holder has functioned more as Obama’s consigliere than as the American people’s lawyer.
And just last week Holder met with officials in Oslo, Norway and London in an effort to get European allies to do more to stem the the possible flow of terrorists into their countries. The meetings were an opportunity to “exchange information in the way that you can’t if you’re not present” and “come up with techniques to thwart those who would try to do us all harm.”
It is unclear if the foreign dignitaries laughed in the face of Holder, who has long worked to frustrate policy initiatives aimed at making Americans safe from terrorist attacks and invasions.
Every month tens of thousands of illegal aliens, some of whom may be terrorists or part of organized crime, are now streaming unimpeded into the southern United States from Mexico. Some of these illegals are being allowed on domestic airline flights without providing proper identification. And everyone knows that in Democrat-administered regions these illegal immigrants won’t be asked for ID when they try to vote for Hillary Clinton or Elizabeth Warren for president in 2016.
After all, Holder is a poster child for “man-caused disasters,” the Obama administration’s hideous euphemism for acts of terrorism. He is the top law enforcement official serving a president who has provided military and other support to Islamic totalitarians in Libya, Egypt, and elsewhere.
Holder orchestrated or at least silently assented to the Obama administration’s Fast and Furious gun-running operation that cost Border Patrol officer Brian Terry and hundreds of Mexican nationals their lives. This Reichstag fire-like piece of political theater that provided firearms to drug cartels was designed to cause an outbreak of violence and mayhem in an effort to whip up public hysteria against the Second Amendment.
Holder himself has done more to undermine U.S. national security than just about anyone else in the Obama administration, except perhaps for Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Janet Napolitano, and President Obama.
The ultimate political fixer, Holder has a long history of aiding, and in some cases, abetting terrorists. Like Obama, he appears to have a soft spot for bombers in particular, and also like Obama, he has become the envy of sociopaths the world over for his impressive lying and obfuscation skills.
While serving as deputy attorney general, Holder was a principal figure in the vetting of the Clinton administration’s infamous 176 last-minute clemencies in January 2001. Those benefitting from Holder’s questionable recommendations included former Weather Underground members Susan Rosenberg and Linda Evans. Rosenberg was a suspect in the deadly 1981 armed robbery of an armored car and was given a 58-year prison sentence for possessing more than 700 pounds of explosives and an arsenal of illicit weapons. Evans received 40 years for harboring a fugitive from the robbery and using false identification to purchase firearms. She also received five years in connection with eight bombings. (Note: July 18 is the first anniversary of the untimely passing of Larry Grathwohl, a Vietnam War veteran who infiltrated the Weather Underground and later provided evidence against Evans.)
Holder was also involved in President Clinton’s 1999 pardon of 16 members of FALN, Armed Forces of National Liberation—a violent terrorist organization (as designated by the FBI) that was active in the U.S. from 1974 to 1983. The Marxist-Leninist group detonated almost 130 bombs in government and corporate buildings in Chicago, New York, and the nation’s capital in a failed bid for Puerto Rican independence. FALN bombs killed six individuals — including Chile’s ambassador to the U.S. —and wounded at least 80 others. Congress subsequently condemned the acts of clemency by votes of 95-2 in the Senate and 311-41 in the House.
An enabler of Islamic terrorists, former lawyer Lynne Stewart was released from prison last year after serving only three years of a 10-year prison sentence for terrorism-related offenses. The premature return to society of Stewart, who has terminal cancer, was made possible after Holder’s Justice Department relaxed the criteria for early release on compassionate grounds.
During George W. Bush’s presidency, Holder was a partner at the Washington, D.C., law firm of Covington & Burling, which represented Islamic terrorists. At one time he condemned the terrorist detention center in Guantanamo Bay as an “international embarrassment.” As U.S. attorney general, Holder has sought to try Muslim terrorists in civilian courts instead of military tribunals and has lauded Supreme Court decisions that undermine what the previous administration called the Global War on Terror.
With policies like these, more Holder-made disasters are a dead certainty.