Christian Whiton: Southern Border Crisis Poses Terrorism Threat

There is "no way of knowing" just who is crossing the nation's southern border, Christian Whiton, a principal at global advisory firm D.C. International Advisory, told Newsmax TV, and that creates a "real fear" for the United States.

"If you're a terrorist thinking about a way to mount an operation in North America, I mean, are you going to go through the problem of trying to recruit a lone wolf, someone who is unreliable, someone you don't have a relationship with?" Whiton asked Monday on "America's Forum."

Story continues below video.

Note: Watch Newsmax TV now on DIRECTV Ch. 349 and DISH Ch. 223
Get Newsmax TV on your cable system – Click Here Now

Or, he said, "are you going to try to bluff your way through customs at JFK or another port of entry where you need a complicated back story?"

Instead, he said a terrorist could just "liaise with the coyotes, with the human traffickers who seem to have freedom to move throughout that region ... and that's a real fear."

Immigration officials are not doing much to determine migrants' countries of origin, and without cooperation from Central America they do not really know who is coming into the country, Whiton said.

"Not only have we already uncovered terrorist plots that involves the cross-order mayhem on the southern border, you also have a crime spree," he said. "Texas Gov. Rick Perry is reporting that over the last five years, 3,000 Texans have been murdered by illegals, and 8,000 have been victims of sexual assaults."

Those statistics are often disputed by liberals, said Whiton, but the immigrant surge is a "real law enforcement nightmare, and as I said, we already have some indications that terrorists are looking at this route."

But no matter whether the U.S. Border Patrol eventually is run by another government entity such as the Pentagon, it will remain ineffective as long as signals are coming from the White House that indicate coming across the southern border is fine, said Whiton.

"President [Barack] Obama has said he's going to work to send these people, this latest surge of people from Central America back, but then you look at reality and you see that's not happening," said Whiton. "Are they being pushed back at the border? Are they being deported rapidly? It's not happening."

There are governors in border states trying to do what they can, but that's difficult, too, said Whiton.

"So what you need to do is make the threat of deportation real whether we intercept an illegal immigrant at the border or whether we detect them inside," he said. "Certainly, if you're caught committing a crime inside the United States and you're found to be here illegally, it should be a pretty quick one-way ticket back to your country of origin. That's not the case right now."

Whiton said he blames Democrats for not passing a budget bill before Congress left for its August recess.

"If you look at the place where laws go to die in Washington, it is the U.S. Senate as run by Harry Reid," said Whiton.

Meanwhile, he complained that Obama created the current crisis with his DREAM Act and with signaling to Latin America that there are avenues to staying in the United States permanently.

"The talk of amnesty, and now he wants not to solve the problem but [with] several billion dollars more, including for things that have nothing to do with the border," said Whiton. "If you look at some of the various bills that were placed before Congress, you know this isn't rocket science. Every single country in the world controls its border to some extent, and most do it very well. We do not."

Whiton said if he were president, he would secure the border, and then "create mechanisms for internal enforcement for the deportation of people who are here illegally and who are committing crimes."

That does not mean sending 11 million people back to their own countries, he said, but creating "disincentives" to keep immigrants from coming here in the first place. But that won't happen until after the 2016 presidential elections.

"He has really poisoned any relationship with Congress," said Whiton. "Republicans are set to pick up seats, but this doesn't get fixed until we have a new president."