It’s no secret that MS-13 has ties to Al-Qaeda going back at least to early 2002. Jihad Watch ran a post on Al-Qaeda’s link to MS-13 back in January of 2005 and FrontPage ran a piece a week or so earlier about the connection that included some disturbing details about high ranking known AQ operatives spotted meeting with the gang in Honduras. One of the first pieces I wrote for Red Alerts detailed the link between the Kries faction of the Aryan Nations, Radical Islamist groups and the Bolivarian revolution in Latin America.

The Narco-terror/Islamist connection has been a story that has slowly fallen off most people’s radar unfortunately. I myself forgot about it until alerted to this piece by Dr. Paul William of The Last Crusade that just ran on Family Security Matters that details how little progress we’ve made in the last few years:

In the wake of 9/11, Mara Salvatrucha attracted the attention of top al Qaeda officials, who realized that the gang could be used to smuggle operatives and weapons into the United States.[1] An agreement was forged between the terrorists and the gang-bangers. In exchange for safe passage across the border, al Qaeda – through its cells in South America – agreed to pay the Maras from $30,000 to $50,000 for each sleeper agent they managed to smuggle into the country with bogus matricula consulars.[2]

Matricula consulars are official identification cards that are issued by the Mexican government through its consular offices. The cards verify that the bearers are Mexican citizens who are living outside of Mexico
with the government’s permission.

According to U.S. officials, these cards pose a grave threat to national security. Steven McCraw, assistant director of the FBI’s Office of Intelligence, told a House Judiciary Subcommittee: “The ability of foreign nationals to use the matricula consular provides an opportunity for terrorists to move freely within the United States without triggering name-based watch lists that are disseminated to local police officers.”

Counterfeit matricula consulars are easy to obtain. In Los Angeles, the going rate is $90; in New York City, $150.

[…]

According to border patrol officials, including Sheriff D’Wayne Jenigan of Del Rio, Texas, thousands of Special Interest Aliens (SIAs), with the help of Mara Salvatrucha “coyotes,” have made their way across the Mexican border and into the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Such SIAs come from countries that pose national security concerns: Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Egypt, Somalia, Yemen, Jordan, Lebanon, and even Iraq.

The routes used by illegal aliens to enter the U.S. have become littered with discarded Muslim prayer blankets, pages from Islamic texts, and Arabic newspapers. Law enforcement officials have named such passageways “terrorists’ alleys” and a street leading north from the city of Douglas, Arizona, as “Arab Road.”

Ready for that fence? The Obama administration is less interested in securing our southern border than Bush, who I respect but had a blind spot on the dangers Mexico poses to us. We need to keep stories like this circulating so that this homeland security issue doesn’t remained buried on the back page until something happens that makes the front page.

h/t reader Damien