Syrians: US/Mex border, Honduras . . . Facebook?

NBC (emphasis added):

The Department of Homeland Security released a statement to NBC indicating that two Syrian families were taken into custody Tuesday, but clarified that they families weren’t trying to “sneak in.”

DHS confirms that on Tuesday, members of two Syrian families, two men, two women and four children, presented themselves at a port of entry in Laredo. They were taken into custody by CBP and turned over to ICE for further processing. The two adult women and four children were transferred to the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas. The two men from these families are being held at the South Texas Detention Center in Pearsall Texas. Due to privacy issues, no additional information will be provided at this time.

With no direct flights from Syria to Texas, refugees fly from a neighboring country to Mexico or other Central American countries and then make their way into the states.

Breitbart has more,

Breitbart Texas can confirm that a Syrian did attempt to enter the U.S. illegally through Texas in late September. The Syrian was caught using a passport that belonged to someone else and U.S. authorities decided against prosecuting anyone involved due to “circumstances.”

In other news,
Honduras arrests five Syrians headed to US with stolen passports, with information on human-traffic routes (emphasis added),

The Syrians were arrested on Tuesday as they flew into Toncontin airport serving the Honduran capital and failed to make it past airport security checks, a police spokesman, Anibal Baca, told reporters.

“Five Syrian citizens have been detained and will be taken to our offices to be investigated because it is suspected they are carrying false documents, passports stolen in Greece,” Baca said.

They had traveled by air from Syria to Lebanon, then to Turkey, Brazil, Argentina, Costa Rica and on to Honduras.

From there they were to make their way to Honduras’ second city of San Pedro Sula with the aim of going overland through Guatemala, then Mexico and on to the United States, Baca told AFP.[*]

Last evening I engaged in a discussion with a former WH staff member on Facebook. These were my points,

1. Arab countries are unwilling to take Syrian refugees due to security reasons.
2. The U.S. border human traffic coming from the south is controlled by cartels, some of the most criminal and violent organizations in the world, which will do anything for money. ISIS can pay.
3. The FBI said they can’t vet them.
4. Southcom’s Gen. Kelly testified to Congress that ISIS could move without impediment across the region.
5. The links I posted above show evidence of a fraud and Syrians attempting to enter the US with fake passports.
6. Last, but not least, Uruguay took 5 Syrian families (google my blog, “Fausta’s blog Syria Uruguay”), a total of 45 people, which have refused to assimilate, learn the language or take employment. Additionally, there is substantial evidence of wife abuse and child abuse among them; the authorities have washed their hands.
7. So my question to you is, Why bring thousands here? Why not do other refugee relief aid overseas, in areas secured in their country or adjacent countries?

The discussion remained civilized, and the position of the people favoring unlimited immigration was that we must take all of them since “this is the biggest humanitarian crisis” (yes, someone even brought up Oliver Willis’s tweet – without crediting him). The closest anyone got to answering my question, “Why bring thousands here? Why not do other refugee relief aid overseas, in areas secured in their country or adjacent countries?” was to invoke American Exceptionalism, something Obama doesn’t believe in, or more accurately, believes in opportunistically.

When I posited whether, considering that in the present environment of high-alert and distrust the governors of 31 states say that Syrians are not welcome, it behooves the WH to explain its reasoning for accepting 10,000(?) more, the answer was that the POTUS doesn’t need to explain anything, since what the governors are proposing is flat-out unconstitutional, period.

You can understand that I agree with what Tom McGuire says,

Very few marketing professionals believe that the best way to make a sale is to drop a product on the customer’s doorstep and let them figure out for themselves that it is just what they wanted. That wisdom has not penetrated the White House.

The FB discussion was interesting and revealing, and unusual in that it remained civilized.

However, elsewhere on FB a now-former friend (a personal friend of many years) posted a long paragraph accusing anyone who does not welcome all refugees with open arms of having lost all of their humanity, and despairing of their heartlessness. With statements like that, all one’s left to do is to drop and block that “friend.”

My question, however, remains unanswered, Why bring thousands here? Why not do other refugee relief aid overseas, in areas secured in their country or adjacent countries?

Parting tweet,

Weren’t we told we cannot be the world’s police force? But yet we can now be the world’s department of social services #socialist-insanity

— TNPowl Ohio (@Tnpowl) November 19, 2015

UPDATE
[*] Allahpundit:

No reason to believe they’re terrorists, authorities are quick to note, as it’s not just terrorists who sometimes steal a passport to get where they’re going. Fair enough, but if this is simple illegal immigration in search of economic opportunity, why make a long journey through Turkey, South America, and Central America to the United States instead of taking advantage of Merkel’s open-borders policy and heading for Germanistan? Also, where’d they get the passports? And why steal them? Is it a simple matter of genuine passports being hard to come by amid the collapse of Syria’s civil state or is there another reason?

Ace:

Good point. People don’t do more work than they have to. If they did extra work here, one has to wonder about their actual goal.

And,
Even if you are competent and have sufficient background information to do effective vetting, you have to know what you are vetting for.