KHOU News Houston - Somali Terrorist Threat Raises Questions On Border Security

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KHOU News Houston - Somali Terrorist Threat Raises Questions On Border Security

By Shern Min-Chow

A recent Homeland Security Alert distributed to Houston Police and Harris County Sheriff's Deputies is asking local authorities to look out for Mohamed Ali, a man suspected of having ties with the Somali terrorist group Al- Shabaab.

Somalian refugee Omar Osman's first reaction to Al-Shabaab is: "What they doing is unbelievable."
Osman runs a local Somali resettlement center, the Somali Bantu of Greater Houston. They offer job training, housing, English classes to new arrivals. www.sbantuhouston.org.

The Bantu are a persecuted ethnic minority in Somalia. Osman hears about Al-Shabaab from new arrivals. He says Al-Shabaab "cut off the hands and the legs" of their enemies.

Now, he is learning what he fled in Somalia may be following him here. A federal indictment issued this month in San Antonio accuses a Somali citizen smuggling hundreds of people into the U.S, including some with ties to an Al-Shabaab linked terrorist group.

Experts believe they, like Ali, are coming through Mexico to Texas, along well established human smuggling routes.
Houston area Congressman Ted Poe has been a strong advocate in securing the U.S.-Mexico border.

"Because our border is porous we are getting everybody, the good the bad and the ugly and right now we're getting a lot of the bad and the ugly," he said.

Last month, Poe, who sits on the Foreign Affairs Committee and Terrorism subcommittee, was among those calling for national guardsmen to patrol the southern border.

Even with the recent addition of predator drones to the existing border camera system, Poe says technology isn't enough.

"We need, bottom line, boots on the ground to keep the criminal cartels and criminal terrorists, if you would, from coming."

If terrorists are already here, where are they? Is Al Shabaab trying to hide in the legitimate Somali community?

"We have seen so many authorities coming to our offices asking the same questions," Osman says. "Our answer, our support was to help."

If Al Shabaab succeeds, Osman fails.

"If they do bad thing, that means I'm not going to live in safety," he said.

He said safety is something he's already risked his life to find.

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