Border security

EXCLUSIVE: Jihadists At The Door - Countering Terrorist Infiltration Of America’s Land Borders

In March 2011, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) investigators set their final dragnet at the Miami International Airport and waited to score a win in the war on terror. Soon enough, their longtime quarry, Iran Ul Haq, a Pakistani resident of Ecuador they’d been tracking across the globe for months, stepped off a plane from Quito and they slapped cuffs on him.

A secret, high-wire intercontinental undercover sting of a rare sort the American public knows nothing about was finally over.

For years, Ul Haq had run a profitable, globe-spanning human smuggling network out of Quito, transporting an endless backlog of fellow Pakistanis through Latin America to the US southwestern border. He charged them $60,000 each. Run by ICE Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) with other countries from both the US attaché office in Quito and a local residence office in Atlanta, Georgia, The investigation had been complicated and expensive. It also was unique for another important reason; HSI agents were able to test a theory about long-distance human smuggling operators like Ul Haq. Was he willing to smuggle anyone into the US, even avowed terrorists?