Wisconsin Congressman Tom Tiffany Returns from the Jungle Raising National Security Concerns

By Todd Bensman as published June 2, 2021 by the Center for Immigration Studies

A record 10,000 so-called ‘extra-continental’ migrants from around the world poured through the notoriously untamed Darian Gap jungle passage between Colombia and Panama, bound for the American border, during just in the single month of May, according to two journalists and a US congressman who recently returned from the region. Amid the flood of humanity are many special interest aliens from nations of US intelligence community concern for terrorism.

“The numbers are the highest…

PERUSE BENSMAN’S “DISPATCHES FROM A BORDER IN CRISIS” COLLECTION HERE

By Todd Bensman, as published May 26, 2021 by the Center for Immigration Studies

ROMA, Texas — The first two early clues that America’s burgeoning mass-migration phenomenon has become something nationally historic appeared out of the oil-black night on a white dust road leading from a residential outskirt of this rough-hewn Texas border town.

A small group of journalist friends and I had just begun the mile hike down the road to the Rio Grande, guided by a pistol-packing Christian pastor from the area, when a Border Patrol agent pulled…

Texas escalates and expands a deployment to secure international border

By Todd Bensman for the Center for Immigration Studies

(Disclosure: Bensman worked for the Texas Department of Public Safety’s Intelligence and Counterterrorism division from 2009–2018)

ROMA, Texas — The rafts filled with women and children started crossing the Rio Grande and landing on the Texas bank after night fell, in the immediate vicinity of the Roma-Ciudad Miguel Aleman International Bridge.

The first rubber raft loads immediately tied up the few US Border Patrol agents on hand under the bridge with taking down names, shooting photos of each immigrant and loading…

By Todd Bensman for the Center for Immigration Studies

OJINAGA, Mexico — The nine Central Americans filed single file from a Mexican customs building at the Presidio-Ojinaga International Bridge and out onto the street with no food, no plan and the heavy burden of bad luck.

The US Border Patrol had caught them on a ranch about 80 or 100 miles inside Texas following a six-day wilderness trek and, under the so-called Title 42 pandemic-containment policy now being applied mainly to single adults, immediately transported them almost to square one. …

‘There’s no one watching’, a smuggler says

By Todd Bensman as published on April 27, 2021 by the Center for Immigration Studies

OJINAGA, Mexico — Under the international bridge connecting this town to Presidio, Texas, a human smuggling guide snorted cocaine with a buddy and two prostitutes — the chosen rewards for work leading a large group of Central American immigrants on a long backpacking journey to ne

“Jose Antonio”, the name offered to the Center for Immigration Studies, said he was a long-distance foot guide, a guia, for the ultra-violent La Linea cartel controlling this area. He leads groups of immigrants on eight- to 12-day treks…

By Todd Bensman as originally published April 14, 2021 by the Center for Immigration Studies

As a mass-migration wave overwhelms the southern border, the Department of Justice and Department of the Treasury have brought hammers down on a Pakistan-based human smuggling organization that continues to illegally ferry foreign nationals “who pose a threat to national security” through the Americas to the U.S. southern border.

CIA, DIA, FBI, satellites, military play major parts in U.S.-based globe-spanning network

By Todd Bensman as originally published April 5, 2021 by SpyTalk.com

In 2017, an informant for the Texas Department of Public Safety inside Mexico reported that three suspected Pakistani al-Qaeda operatives were about to cross the border. The alarming report landed on my desk because I worked for DPS’s Intelligence and Counterterrorism Division, where I managed an analytical team that worked such threat matters alongside federal agencies inside the Austin-based Texas Fusion Center.

Within a few days, U.S. Border Patrol agents picked up three Pakistanis near Laredo and reported it to my team. Per usual with reports of a possible…

Charters and Greyhound are delivering them where they want to go

By Todd Bensman as published March 31, 2021 by the Center for Immigration Studies

DEL RIO, Texas — On a recent evening with the night ahead looking long, an idling charter bus parked on a lot prepared to disperse a new kind of import throughout the American landscape.

The bus and a small van nearby were packed with 60 or so mostly Haitian families fresh out of the Rio Grande from their illegal crossings.

After testing negative for Covid and other processing, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security had given them legal documents and released them to a local nongovernmental…