In a stark warning, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency is alerting all field offices that Iran or its proxies may try to transport “operatives, money or materials” across the southern or northern U.S. borders to conduct a terrorism attack against Americans, according to an agency memo obtained Wednesday by Just the News.
The memo from the CBP’s Office of Field Operations urged agency personnel to take a “heightened posture due to ongoing security threats” and suggested that recent, coordinated attack from Iran-backed Hezbollah on Israeli children playing in Golan Heights soccer fields raised the distinct threat of similar attacks against the West.
Israel’s assassination of a Hamas leader in Tehran was also cited in the alert.
“The seniority of the targets, the sensitive locations of the strikes, and their near simultaneity represents an escalation in tension in the region and raises concerns of additional reprisals from Iran and its regional proxies,” the memo states.
“With significant government of Iran and Lebanese Hezbollah influence and presence in the Western Hemisphere, OFO could see cross-border travel of operatives, money and or materials to support operations in the United States."
The memo also states that ports of entry should increase their enforcement posture by conducting high visibility operations and "hardening measures.”
And it urged CBP to work with federal, state and local law enforcement partners to “deter, prevent, preempt or respond to a terrorism attack against the United States.”
The memo also confirmed earlier intelligence that the Venezuelan-based gang Tren de Aragua (TdA) has moved extensive assets across the U.S. border to northeastern states and its members may try to fire weapons on law enforcement.
The memo more specifically that recent intelligence has indicated the TdA operating in Denver has been "given a green light to fire on or attack law enforcement.”
The warning from a key agency inside Homeland Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’ department was one of the starkest reminders about the potential election-year consequences of Biden-Harris administration policies that loosened border security and unfroze billions of dollars to Iran, a U.S.-designated state sponsor of terrorism.
And the memo emerged during a period of dramatic terror threat developments. On Wednesday, authorities canceled a series of Taylor Swift concerts in Austria because of concerns about possible terrorism.
A day earlier, federal prosecutors in Brooklyn revealed the FBI had arrested a Pakistani man nearly a month ago on evidence he was working with Iran to carry out assassinations targeting several political figures, including former President Donald Trump.
And a major military base near Washington, D.C., Fort Belvoir in Virginia, suddenly closed its gates to non-authorized and public travel because of unspecified security threats.
In May, a nearby base, the Marine headquarters at Quantico, Va., also arrested two Jordanian men for trying to enter that installation without authorization.
Walid Phares, a national security expert who works with U.S. counterterrorism and has advised several presidential candidates, told Just the News he believes Iran may be launching terror attacks and making threats to force a better deal with a lame-duck President Joe Biden. He expressed concern that the administration did not reveal the arrest of the Trump assassination plot figure for several weeks after he was arrested July 12.
Iran’s leaders “want chaos, because in chaos, they could do whatever they want in the region, including attacking Israel and the Arabs,” Phares said. “So that's No. 1 It's an old thing. No. 2, and the most important for our public, is, why have you not informed the public? I mean, this is like the biggest question that Congress needs to start asking, in my view.
“The Iran deal is not just a deal over nuclear weapons. It's a deal over $150 billion and the regime, no doubt about it, is telling the people who are in charge now of that deal that if you start exposing anything we're doing or our agents are doing, we're off the deal."
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