Most Americans might still be surprised to know that Mexicans and Central Americans are not the only ones who illegally cross the U.S. southern border every year. Among the tens of thousands of migrants who jump that border every year are Iranians and plenty of migrants from Iran's neck of the woods.
Perhaps fewer Iranians will be reaching the borders now, at least for a while, due to the recent bust in Brazil of Reza Sahami, a dual citizen of Canada and Iran who was caught guiding a group of seven Iranian nationals in the city of Assis Brasil on the border of Peru. All seven Iranians possessed fraudulent or altered passports from Israel, Denmark, and Canada.
The Brazilian bust comes at a time of heightened vigilance in American homeland security as Iran continues to threaten violent retaliation for the January 2020 U.S. drone-strike assassination of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force General Qasem Soleimani. Recent reporting had Iran plotting to assassinate the U.S. ambassador to South Africa in retaliation for the Soleimani killing.
Over the September 19 weekend, the guard's website quoted Gen. Hossein Salami as saying, "Mr. Trump! Our revenge for martyrdom of our great general is obvious, serious and real."
No information points to border infiltration as a means for Iran to exact its revenge. Neither the ICE press release nor Brazilian media reporting quoted any official concerned that Iranian migrants might be traveling with retaliation orders.
But the timing of a joint U.S.-Brazil counterterrorism operation that netted a smuggler of illegal migrants from Iran — and the fact that the Americans and Brazilians are working so closely on cases like this — is at least very fortuitous.
Brazil is prosecuting but the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Homeland Security Investigations, which works in foreign posts throughout the Americas hunting special interest alien smugglers, played enough of a significant role to issue its own press announcement, which was largely ignored despite the heightened Iranian threat.
"Sahami has been smuggling criminals across international borders for over ten years," said ICE Attaché for Brazil and Bolivia Robert Fuentes in the scarcely reported September 10 ICE press statement.
Brazilian media reported that six Iranians were held for a time, then ordered to...
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Every terrorist caught attempting to enter the USA illegally needs to be drawn & quartered, then sealed in plastic & shipped to the government of their country of origin with a note that reads "This could be you, signed your friend, Uncle Sam"
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