Mexican Cartels Smuggle Terrorists into U.S. Through Rural Texas Border Region

Mexican drug cartels are smuggling foreigners from countries with terrorist links into a small Texas rural town near El Paso and they’re using remote farm roads—rather than interstates—to elude the Border Patrol and other law enforcement barriers, according to Judicial Watch sources on both sides of the Mexico-U.S. border.

The foreigners are classified as Special Interest Aliens (SIA) and they are being transported to stash areas in Acala, a rural crossroads located around 54 miles from El Paso on a state road – Highway 20. Once in the U.S., the SIAs wait for pick-up in the area’s sand hills just across Highway 20. Terrorists have entered the U.S. through Mexico for years and in fact, an internal Texas Department of Public Safety report leaked by the media months ago documents that several members of known Islamist terrorist organizations have been apprehended crossing the southern border in recent years.

Now they’re also being smuggled in through border region airfields, according to JW’s civilian, law enforcement and intelligence sources. The renowned Vicente Carrillo Fuentes cartel is using the Horizon Airport (formerly “West Texas Airport”) in El Paso’s lower valley to smuggle SIAs into the U.S. from Mexico, JW’s inside sources say. The facility is convenient because it’s located only 11 miles from El Paso’s central business district yet it’s small enough that security is virtually nonexistent.

Additionally, the region surrounding El Paso has seen a substantial increase in heroin trafficking, JW’s inside sources reveal. Two crime families associated with the Vincente Carrillo Fuentes cartel are smuggling and trafficking in the vicinity of Tornillo, Fabens and Ft. Hancock. JW’s law enforcement sources say the cartels are exploiting Border Patrol and Texas Department of Public Safety policies and directives constraining and limiting traffic stops and interdiction operations.

This alarming information is part of an ongoing Judicial Watch investigation into crime, terrorism and corruption in the southern border region. Last year JW exposed a sophisticated narco-terror ring with roots in El Paso and strong ties to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Earlier this year JW reported that ISIS is operating in a Mexican border town just eight miles from El Paso, the result of Islamic terrorists joining forces with drug cartels and human smugglers knowns as “coyotes.” JW’s law enforcement sources confirmed that the Mexican smugglers are moving ISIS operatives through the desert and across the porous southern border. Just a few months ago JW reported that a record-breaking,154 pounds of heroin seized in New York entered the United States from Mexico through El Paso. The information came from a federal law enforcement official with first-hand knowledge of the case.