Now is the time for President Trump to push the ‘travel ban’ and border security

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As the Iranian regime gets increasingly desperate, the focus of our national security debate has been solely on what we should or shouldn’t do in the Middle East. However, what recent events have demonstrated is that the focus must be on our homeland, primarily our border security and visa policy. Iran, or any other nation or terrorist group, can hardly threaten our homeland militarily. Nations or terror groups can threaten us from within through our porous border and ill-conceived immigration policies. That was the lesson of 9/11 that, 18 years later, Trump has an opportunity to finally apply.

Over the weekend, the Associated Press reported that the administration is considering expanding the so-called travel ban to other countries, an idea I proposed following the attack on the naval base in Pensacola by a Saudi national brought in on a military training visa. The AP’s sources suggest that seven countries could be added to the list, which currently includes Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen, as well as Venezuela and North Korea. However, as the AP reported two weeks ago, even the existing list is full of loopholes, with the administration continuing to grant waivers. Trump would be wise to shut off as many visas from the Middle East as possible while also locking down our border against illegal infiltrations.

Last year, Qassem Soleimani, the very man over whom this entire conflict began, publicly threatened, “We are closer to you than you think.” He clearly wasn’t referring to Iran’s ability to strike our soldiers, who are sitting ducks in Iraq while engaging in nation-building, ironically, for Soleimani’s Shiite allies. He was likely referring both to his vast network through Hezbollah in Latin America to bring people to our border, as well as the operatives who have gotten into the country over the years through our mass migration from countries like Iran and Lebanon.

When Breitbart.com posted an intelligence bulletin from the Yuma Sector Border Patrol warning last week of a possible Iranian suicide bomber coming north from Mexico, it was a vivid reminder of Soleimani’s haunting words. The report by no means confirms the truth of such a claim, but it does mean that Border Patrol felt the sources were credible enough to issue a warning. And it’s not like Iranians and other Middle Easterners don’t come to our border on a regular basis. They have been coming in increasing numbers throughout the Central American border crisis.

Last week, Honduran media reported that the country’s president announced the arrest of four Iranian nationals at the Nicaraguan border who were believed to have been traveling north to the U.S. Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández has increased his cooperation with the U.S. in recent months and promised to designate Hezbollah, which is a menacing threat in Latin America, as a terrorist group. We don’t know the intentions of these four individuals, but if we actually secured our own border, we wouldn’t have to roll the dice on thousands of unknown special interest aliens who cross our border every year.

The threat of Iranians at the border was confirmed by the police chief in Mexicali, the Mexican border town just south of Calexico, California. She was told by Customs and Border Protection to be on alert for the potential crossing of three Iranian men and one woman.

Read the rest from Daniel Horowitz HERE.

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