A former FBI agent has warned that tunnels used by drug dealers to smuggle drugs and cash into the US from Mexico could be used by the Islamic State to move its jihadist fighters, including suicide bombers and even a nuclear warhead, into the United States.
"Drug dealers have found a way to move money without it being followed," said former FBI agent Tyrone Powers during a recent remark on national television. "They found a way to move people in and out and they found a way to move product."
ISIS agents may find a way to enter the US and "may be, at some point, suicide bombers, which is really scary, and then weapons of mass destruction," said Powers.
Two major drug cartels that could be involved are the Sinaloa Federation, which controls western Mexico's borders from Texas to California, and the Los Zetas, which occupies eastern Mexico. Experts say al-Qaeda once tried to establish links with Mexican drug lords, Newsmax reported.
"It makes logical sense for ISIS to do this," said Powers. "But I do not think they'll be catching the intelligence agencies off guard, because this has been a persistent problem whether it was al-Qaeda or any other group."
Mexico's unstable leadership mixed with drug cartels can create a dangerous concoction that could be used by ISIS, according to experts.
"What's been going on in Mexico creates an opportunity for any organisation to try to take advantage of it, whether it's ISIS or Al Shabbab," said Brandon Behlendorf, a terrorist targeting strategist.
The jihadist group claimed earlier this month that it plans to acquire a nuclear weapon from Pakistan and to sneak it into US territory using drug and human smuggling routes.
Judicial Watch reported in April that ISIS is managing a camp in northern Mexico just a few miles from El Paso, Texas, and that "coyotes" of the Juarez Cartel are helping to "move ISIS terrorists through the desert and across the border between Santa Teresa and Sunland Park, New Mexico."
ISIS fighters are also being smuggled "through the porous border between Acala and Fort Hancock, Texas."
The locations are being eyed by ISIS "because of their understaffed municipal and county police forces, and the relative safe-havens the areas provide for the unchecked large-scale drug smuggling that was already ongoing."
In a related development, the CIA is now reassessing the view that the ISIS is mostly a "regional threat" following the "Bloody Friday" attacks that covered three countries on different continents.
The group is transforming into a global threat because of its ability to "evangelise followers," said retired Army Col. Peter Mansoor, who helped create the US military campaign against al-Qaeda.
"This will only continue unless something is done to destroy ISIL and reduce its appeal to the extremist fringe in the Islamic community," he added.
