ISIS An Immediate Threat Because of Open Borders And Immigration: Top U.S. General

ISIS is an immediate threat because of unprotected borders, General Martin Dempsey has declared.

Dempsey is the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, the highest ranking military officer in America’s armed forces.

In a Pentagon press briefing, he and Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel warned of the threats posed by the ISIS terrorist organization which Hagel deemed “beyond anything we have seen.” ISIS (sometimes referred to as ISIl) this week murdered journalist James Foley, a barbaric act that was initially uploaded to YouTube.

The U.S. is currently conducting airstrikes on ISIS forces in Iraq.

Texas Governor Rick Perry said yesterday that it is very possible that ISIS terrorists may have already crossed the Mexico-U.S. border amidst the unprecedented surge of immigrations entering the U.S. illegally, not all of whom are minors or unaccompanied, and some of whom are gang members. Perry has deployed additional law enforcement and National Guard assets to the southern border to help the overwhelmed Border Patrol in the absence of federal reinforcements.

The Obama administration has been unwilling so far to beef up border security despite the illegal immigrant surge that has created a humanitarian and law enforcement crisis.

In an interview, terrorism expert Joshua Katz said that the Obama administration has underestimated the threat posed by ISIS, which the president earlier this year dismissed as the junior varsity. Katz also said that “Gov. Perry’s words are unfortunately very, very true …. ISIS is a group that will do whatever it takes in order to accomplish its goals. It’s very brutal. It’s very aggressive. They’re going to do anything, and if that means working with cartels, if that means working with other enlisted groups in order to attack the homeland, they will do that. Other groups like Al Qaeda, or other terrorist groups who have a desire to hit the homeland will also use that… we have this sort of this double front aggression toward American borders.”

During the press conference, Gen. Dempsey expressed concern about ISIS fighters who hold passports from western countries, particularly in Europe, which has an open border policy as a result of European Union regulations”

Those folks can go home at some point. That’s why I have conversations with my European colleagues about their southern flank of NATO, which I think is actually more threatened in the near term than we are. Nevertheless, because of open borders and immigration issues, it’s… an immediate threat.”

From Europe, a potential wrongdoer with a passport could fly to the U.S. directly or travel to Central America or Mexico and then penetrate the U.S. border on land undetected or caught and released in many instances.

Separately, Breitbart Texas is reporting that the Transportation Security Administration allows illegal aliens to board a plane without a valid photo ID, something that American citizens and legal residents can’t do when they arrive at the airport for a trip. When Breitbart first reported this last month, it was met with denials from the TSA.

In a subsequent letter to a U.S. congressman, TSA administration John S. Pistole apparently admitted that an illegal immigrant can board a commercial airplane with just an I-862 form, a notice to appear at a future immigration hearing, if TSA can verify the passenger’s identity with immigration officials. Who knows how that verification would operate in practice if at all if an individual does not show up on any database. Parenthetically, it has been widely reported that most illegals never show up for their court hearing and just disappear into the interior of the country.

Border Patrol Agent Hector Garza told Breitbart Texas that the I-862 form can “easily be reproduced or manipulated on any home computer. The Notice to Appear form has no photo, anyone can make one and manipulate one. They do not have any security features, no watermark, nothing. They are simply printed on standard copy paper based on the information the illegal alien says is the truth.”

Similarly, in July, a high-level federal government source told Judicial Watch that because of the huge numbers of unaccompanied Central American minors entering the country that “The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is allowing illegal immigrants go around airport security to catch planes without a photo identification required of all other passengers.”

The Daily Signal observed that these individuals are subject to a more thorough pat-down at airports, but that “Allowing NTAs to be used as a form of identification defies common sense, and the TSA’s procedures do little to alleviate the fact that the U.S. does not know who is boarding its planes. While it is good to see that the TSA more rigorously searches these individuals, putting potentially dangerous individuals on airplanes is an unacceptable security risk. It is bad enough that immigration laws go unenforced, but putting U.S. citizens and flights at risk is irresponsible.”

Do you think ISIS is a threat at the U.S. southern border?