„U.S. homeland security agencies have long regarded illicit migration to U.S. land borders from Muslim-majority countries of the Middle East, South Asia, and North Africa as associated with the threat of infiltration by violent Islamic extremists. So much so that after 9/11, the U.S. government passed legislation that required smuggling interdiction programs to specifically counter long-distance smuggling networks that enable migration from such countries through Latin America.
One of the main efforts to reduce that risk was the deployment of ICE-Homeland Security Investigations (ICE-HSI) throughout Latin America, backed by the intelligence efforts of other outfits, such as the U.S. Southern Command, to take apart the long-haul human smuggling networks that routinely transport migrants from Muslim-majority nations to the southern border, including many flagged by intelligence reporting as terrorist suspects.“ (…)
