On Tuesday, TheBlaze reported on an Islamic State camp in Mexico just miles from the United States border. That report was made possible due to the work of Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog organization. According to the group, this camp is providing reconnoissance and thwarting efforts by law enforcement to protect the border. On Wednesday's 'Glenn Beck Program', Chris Farrell, Director of Investigations at Judicial Watch, joined the program to discuss the bombshell of a story.
Glenn: All right, I want to go to Chris Farrell. He’s the Director of Investigations at Judicial Watch. He is the guy which we worked with to post the article yesterday. These guys have been on this for a long, long, long time. They have confirmed with sources in Mexico that ISIS has established a base in Mexico just a few miles from the United States border. Chris, this is truly stunning, and I don’t hear the world—I don’t hear anybody in America really getting all up in arms about this.
Chris: I agree with you, Glenn. It’s important information, and it comes to us from two incredibly reliable sources that we’ve relied upon now for years, high quality reporting. One is a Mexican army field grade officer. The other is a Mexican federal police inspector, so that’s sort of the gravity or the depth of the source reporting that we have. And they engaged in a joint operation this past late Friday night into early Saturday morning in a neighborhood of Juarez called Anapra, which is kind of on the western edge of Juarez, with an effort to get at an ISIS operational element or cell that’s operating in Anapra. In the course of that, they recovered documents and other materials, and they made us aware of that. It’s a grave threat to the country, and no one should be surprised by it.
Glenn: Talk about the materials that you found, because you found in two different languages plans of one of our forts.
Chris: Fort Bliss, which is right in El Paso, Texas directly across from Juarez, it’s a sprawling—it’s a huge post. It’s home of the army’s First Army Division, the largest division in the army. They found plans of Fort Bliss among those documents, documents in both Arabic and Urdu. According to our sources, this cell, this operational element of ISIS that’s using the southern border or the region near El Paso to conduct reconnaissance in the United States, they’re looking at universities in the region.
Glenn: Okay, so let’s go over the reconnaissance because there’s a couple things going on. One, up in the mountains by New Mexico right on our border in New Mexico, we believe that ISIS is actually—they have scouts up there scouting to bring terrorists and some sort of equipment possibly across our border, and they’re in the New Mexico mountains. Is that correct?
Chris: That is correct. In fact, yesterday afternoon after we broke our story, I received contact from two other law enforcement officials who came back and confirmed to me our reporting was accurate and in fact there was grave concern about these spotters in the mountains to the northwest of El Paso and the fact that that spotting activity which covers border crossing, they can sort of be a very troublesome, very difficult problem for them because it’s a technique that precludes them from intercepting folks crossing the border.
Glenn: Explain that.
Chris: Well, you have spotters who are sitting on these mountainsides looking south, and they direct and guide border crossing operations coming into the United States. So, any efforts on the part of law enforcement to interdict their movement north, they’re either told to stop, change routes, delay, and so it thwarts our law enforcement efforts. And these spotters are sitting in these mountains. They’re armed. They have solar panels to recharge their radios and their phones, and they stay up there for weeks on end. In fact, about five, six years ago, I took Congressman Steve King to Arizona and showed him spotter locations in Arizona that already exist. They’re using the same technique but just one state over. This is old hat. This is stuff they’ve been doing for years.
Glenn: Okay, let’s go to they’re looking at the universities, regional universities, the White Sands missile range, government facilities, electrical power facilities. Why do we believe these things?
Chris: This is the information again from our Mexican intelligence and law enforcement officials telling us this is part of their take from the activities just this past weekend.
Glenn: When did you find out this information?
Chris: I started receiving information immediately very late Friday night that this activity was ongoing, and we came back and tried to sort of re-task or refocus additional questions because we had additional sort of burst of info to us that frankly just lead to more questions. It was so provocative. It was so compelling, the information we got, and so there was a couple of extra rounds of followup.
We’ve spent weeks in that region. I personally have spent weeks and weeks in the El Paso area interviewing law enforcement folks, ordinary civilians who live along in that area, and so this is an ongoing thing for us. We have a great deal of knowledge and depth with our own sensitive reporting network, and so based on the first information we got, we were compelled to go back and dig. We had to get more information, at the same time respecting the safety and security of our sources. We’re not going to get our sources killed. And so we have to be very careful.
Glenn: Here’s why I ask that question. You had this information on Friday. You release it this week. Now, I haven’t been watching the news all day, except for TheBlaze, but I’ve been on the different sites and been reading. I don’t see this burning up Facebook. I don’t see this burning up ABC, NBC. This is a stunning revelation. Have you at least been contacted by the federal government? Has anybody, Homeland Security, anybody contacted you and said, “Okay wait, what do you know?”
Chris: Yes, yes, they have. In fact, like I said, I got two phone calls late yesterday afternoon from law enforcement agencies seeking additional information and frankly confirming to us that our reporting was right on the money. There were techniques and tactics being used that law enforcement folks in that region were looking, that they were aware of, that they wanted more details on.
Glenn: Go ahead.
Chris: I was going to say they expressed very grave concern over the spotter issue we discussed a couple of moments ago.
Glenn: Okay. Do you have any idea how many people we might be talking about, how long they’ve been there?
Chris: I do not have a firm number on people. I know it’s several, but I can’t give you a hard number because there’s actually, there’s two cells in the area. There’s the one in Anapra which is just to the west of Juarez, and then there’s another one in Palomas which is across the border from Columbus and Deming, New Mexico. So, these two elements, in fact, they move back and forth between those two cities, those two towns. But they use that incredibly porous southern border to get into the United States.
Glenn: Chris, last question, the drug cartels are involved in this, right?
Chris: Absolutely. The coyotes who work for the cartels are facilitating this movement. It’s business for them. It’s money.
Glenn: Okay, thank you very much, Chris. I appreciate it. Pray for our border agents. We pray every night on our knees that those that wish to destroy the Constitution and wish to destroy the United States, whether they are here or abroad, that they are somehow or another miraculously thwarted and God doesn’t turn his face from us.
I will tell you this is extraordinarily concerning. This week, ISIS sent a message in English to the English-speaking peoples of the world, now’s the time to hit America. They are looking for another 9/11 here in America. Now, we find out they’ve been bringing people across our border because we’ve done nothing on our southern border.
