Mexican Cartels Help Hezbollah Infiltrate U.S.

In a shocking revelation made by a veteran U.S. counterterrorism expert, Hezbollah has infiltrated the Southwest United States by joining forces with Mexican drug cartels that have long operated in the region.

Judicial Watch has for years reported on the chilling connection between Islamic extremists and Mexican drug cartels. In fact, as far back as 2007 JW wrote about an astounding Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) report that lays out how Islamic terrorists and Mexican drug gangs have teamed up to successfully penetrate the U.S. as well as finance terror networks in the Middle East

In Hezbollah’s case, a growing “business relationship” with cartels has allowed the Shia Islamic militant group to have a growing presence in the U.S., says Matthew Levitt, an esteemed terrorism expert with an impressive resume. Levitt is a former counterterrorism intelligence analyst at the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and State Department counterterrorism adviser. He also served as the No. 2 intelligence official at the U.S. Treasury where he operated the agency’s terrorism and financial intelligence branch.

Levitt offers details of this mind-boggling collaboration between two powerful criminal enterprises in a new book titled: “Hezbollah: The Global Footprint of Lebanon’s Party of God.” A nonprofit dedicated to exposing the dangers of Islamic extremism, the Clarion Project, profiled the book in a recent article titled “Growing Hezbollah Presence in Southwest U.S.”

Hezbollah’s business relationship with Mexican drug cartels is a driving force behind this phenomenon, according to the analysis that quotes alarming excerpts from the book. For instance in 2009, a former Chief of Operations for the DEA said that Hezbollah uses “the same criminal weapons smugglers, document traffickers and transportation experts as the drug cartels.”

A year later a man (Jamal Yousef) arrested in New York admitted stealing weapons from Iraq for Hezbollah and told authorities of a Hezbollah stockpile in Mexico that included 100 M-16 assault rifles, 100 AR-15 rifles, 2500 hand grenades, C4 explosives and anti-tank weapons. That same year a Hezbollah terrorist was captured in Tijuana and a senior Mexican military officer confirmed the group was conducting explosives training for members of Mexican drug cartels.

In the U.S., law enforcement officials across the nation’s Southwest region report a rise in imprisoned gang members with Farsi tattoos that experts say express loyalty to Hezbollah, the book analysis reveals. One U.S. law enforcement official is quoted as saying this: “You could almost pick your city and you would probably have a [Hezbollah] presence.”

This is not surprising considering that for years a number of reports have exposed the connection between Mexico and Middle Eastern terrorists. In 2010 a veteran federal agent in the U.S. immigration system exposed a government cover-up of Middle Eastern terrorists entering the country through Mexico. The 30-year agent confirmed that thousands of SIAs (Special Interest Aliens) from terrorist nations like Yemen, Iran, Sudan and Afghanistan—classified as OTM (Other Than Mexican)—were captured along the southern border.

In 2011 a frightening exposé broadcast by the world’s largest Spanish news network documented how Middle Eastern terrorists have infiltrated Latin American countries—especially Mexico—to plan an attack against the United States. The documentary uses undercover videos taken during a seven-month investigation that prove diplomats from Iran, Venezuela and Cuba planned a cybernetic attack against the White House, FBI, Pentagon and U.S. nuclear plants.