Todd Bensman has returned again from Mexico, this time with a story, posted today on CIS.org, describing the first migrant shelter in that country that caters exclusively to the world’s Muslims. According to Bensman, the combination mosque/shelter in Tijuana–dubbed the Albergue Assabil/Mesquijta Taybah shelter–serves Muslim migrants,
who arrive by taxi and Uber daily at its gated door from all over the Islamic world, including Yemen, Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Lebanon, Egypt, Morocco, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Somalia, and other countries in the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia.
All of the shelter’s customers are bound for one destination: the United States, which lies just two blocks away, behind a wall, “which all who shelter here plan to get past one way or another.”
To help them reach that goal, the shelter has allied with various non-profit migrant advocacy groups, which coach would-be asylees in how to present a winning case to American officials. For migrants hailing from some Islamic countries–such as the Chechen Republic–that might involve persuading their interviewers that they are not outright terrorists.
Fiscal Year 2022, which ended in September, saw a record 98 migrants identified as being on the FBI’s terrorism watch list. Another nine such potential terrorists were apprehended in October. No one knows how many came through the Assabil/Mesquijta Taybah shelter, which opened in July, because neither Mexican nor American officials seem interested in inquiring.
One U.S. official told Bensman that, “because they are doing humanitarian work, [the shelter’s management] get to operate basically with impunity.”
The shelter’s managers say they are open to answering questions about their clients, but no one has yet asked.
For more, see CIS.org.