Judicial Watch: Terrorists' route through Mexico confirmed

Government watchdog Judicial Watch has reported several times over recent years the existence of a route through Mexico and across the U.S. southern border for ISIS terrorists, as well as on an ISIS training cell in Mexico just a few miles from El Paso, Texas.

Those reports now have been confirmed by no less than a captured ISIS fighter, according to the organization's newest documentation.

WND has cited the Judicial Watch reports over the years and in fact documented only a few months ago reports of prayer rugs being found.

Those rugs, typical of those used in Islamic worship, were found by ranchers and farmers near the U.S.-Mexico border and suggest Middle Easterners are penetrating the southern frontier.

The Washington Examiner, reporting from a New Mexico border town, spoke to a rancher who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation by cartels.

"There's a lot of people coming in not just from Mexico," the rancher said. "People, the general public, just don't get the terrorist threats of that.

"That's what's really scary. You don't know what’s coming across. We've found prayer rugs out here. It's unreal. It's not just Mexican nationals that are coming across."

Now Judicial Watch is reporting a captured ISIS fighter is giving details of a plot in which "jihadists enter the country through the southern border to carry out an attack."

"The terrorists begin their journey in Central America and exploit vulnerabilities in the Mexican border to reach the U.S., according to Abu Henricki, an ISIS soldier captured by the Syrian Democratic Forces in Rojava, Syria," Judicial Watch reported Tuesday.

"Henricki and 160 of his fellow terrorists were interviewed at length by a research group called the International Center for the Study of Violent Extremism. The nonpartisan organization published its findings recently in an alarming report that includes a video of the interview with the captured terrorist, who is Canadian and has dual Trinidadian citizenship."

According to that report, Henrick explained, "They were going to move me to the Mexican side [of the U.S. southern border] via Puerto Rico. This was mastermind[ed] by a guy in America. Where he is, I do not know. That information, the plan came from someone from the New Jersey state from America. I was going to take a boat [from Puerto Rico] into Mexico. He was going to smuggle me in."

The researchers' report shows some fighters were to travel from Syria.

"Whatever one thinks of President Donald Trump's heightened rhetoric about the U.S.- Mexico border and his many claims that it is vulnerable to terrorists, ISIS apparently also thought so, as knowledge of this ISIS plot came from the mouth of a now-repentant ISIS cadre," the report said.

Judicial Watch has reported several times on the threat offered by a porous southern border and the intention on the part of Islamists to enter the U.S. for the purpose of terror.

"Judicial Watch has interviewed local, state and federal law enforcement officials as well as U.S. and Mexican military sources and has traveled to remote Mexican border towns to interview American ranchers. When the Central American caravan got started last fall, Judicial Watch deployed an investigative team to the Guatemala-Honduras border after Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales confirmed that nearly 100 Isis terrorists had been apprehended in the impoverished Central American nation," the organization reported.

At that time it confirmed ISIS has a training cell just outside of El Paso in an area called "Anapra."

"We also verified that Mexican drug cartels are smuggling foreigners from countries with terrorist links to stash areas in a rural Texas town (Acala) near El Paso. Back in 2014 Judicial Watch reported that four ISIS soldiers, who entered the U.S. through the Mexican border, were arrested in McAllen and Pharr Texas," the organization said.

It also exposed plans involving drug traffickers helping Islamic terrorists to cross into the U.S.

"The U.S. government – under both Republican and Democrat administrations – has long possessed intelligence indicating that Islamic terrorists exploit the southern border. In fact, Judicial Watch uncovered State Department records confirming that, for more than a decade, the government has known that 'Arab extremists' are entering the country through Mexico with the assistance of smuggling network 'cells,'" Judicial Watch said.

'ISIS cells'

WND reported last year a new 20-mile section of wall on the U.S. border with Mexico was being built in an area "where ISIS cells operate and Juárez Cartel smugglers help terrorists through the desert and across the border," according to Judicial Watch, citing law-enforcement officials on both sides of the border.

Judicial Watch said an ISIS camp was discovered just a few miles from El Paso. Sources said police had found documents in Arabic and Urdu as well as "plans" of Fort Bliss.

“Muslim prayer rugs were recovered with the documents” during that investigation, Judicial Watch said in a report.

WND also reported that according to Customs and Border Protection officials, the Laredo sector had apprehended 209 Bangladeshi nationals that year.

"A growing number of illegal aliens from terrorist nations – including Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh – have tried to enter the U.S. through Mexico in the last few years," Judicial Watch said at the time.

One Bangladeshi who had been detained said he arrived in El Paso after traveling from South America to Juarez, Mexico.

In 2017, Texas issued a warning about ISIS camps just across the border. The Texas Public Safety Threat Overview at the time said the "the current terrorism threat to Texas is elevated."

"We are especially concerned about the potential for terrorist infiltration across the U.S.-Mexico border, particularly as foreign terrorist fighters depart Syria and Iraq and enter global migration flows," the report said.