NEW YORK, July 3, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Don Winslow,
the acclaimed author of The Cartel, which hit the
New York Times bestseller list
on Wednesday, says that the U.S. is so concerned with the
terrorists half a world away that we don't recognize them just
across our border, and that it could lead to an attack on American
soil.
"While the dominant Sinaloa Cartel might be reluctant to risk
American retaliation by smuggling terrorists, the lesser cartels,
with little to lose, will be tempted," Winslow said. "Human
trafficking now makes up almost 30% of one such cartel's income;
it's not a huge leap from smuggling undocumented workers to
trafficking terrorists. The cartels are motivated by profit – drug
money or terrorist money is the same to them, and these
sophisticated tunnels, with railroad tracks, air-conditioning,
elevators, and dormitories are perfect clandestine entry points for
terrorists."
Winslow's epic crime novel The Cartel has been compared
to The Godfather and Game of Thrones, and since
its June 23 publication has received
wide praise by The New York Times,
The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, Esquire, Associated Press,
Entertainment Weekly, The Los Angeles
Times and dozens of other publications. Winslow
has spent more than fifteen years writing and researching the
Mexican cartels and the war on drugs for the international
bestsellers The Power of the Dog and Savages.
"Politicians and Donald Trump
keep talking about building a wall that stretches the entire
2,000-mile land border with Mexico. It doesn't matter how high a wall you
build if the traffickers can tunnel under it," Winslow
said.
"Every few months we discover a new tunnel under the
Mexican-American border, mostly in the Tijuana-San
Diego area," Winslow said. "Since the early 1990's
they've been used to smuggle drugs, but how long will it be before
they're used to transport terrorists into the United States?
Congress's tough-on-crime stance makes us soft on border
security."
"The Mexican drug cartels are more sophisticated and wealthier
than the jihadists, already have a presence in 230 American cities,
and have carried out executions inside the United States," Winslow stressed.
"The cartels were running the ISIS playbook—decapitations,
immolations, videos, social media—ten years ago. There is a
very direct connection between the Mexican cartels and ISIS in the
sense of the atrocities they carry out, and largely ISIS learned
this behavior from the cartels. There are also credible
reports that ISIS considers the Mexican border to be
vulnerable. Right now it's just a threat, but how long will
it be before the threat is real?"
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SOURCE The Story Factory