I'm certainly no part of the liberal left (even though this would have to clearly defined), but I didn't know the Feds had warned Texas about this. I'll add I'm pretty surprised with that. I've had the opportunity to meet and to talk with people who had crossed borders illegally, and they were... Peasants. Really poor folks. Exactly the opposite of the man I've seen (yeah, I watched the whole video) beheading American journalist James Foley. That guy was soft-spoken, he spoke good English, and talked like an educated man, even though he had crazy ideas. I'm sure this man has a passport, and that he travels by plane. Then the world has seen that IS is very well-funded. So some people scare others with poor immigrants, but the real terrorists are elsewhere. Remember Bin Laden was from one of Saudi Arabia's richest families.
Um, this is a false analogy. Because you've seen one or several of a population or class, does not mean that your attribution of characteristics extends to the outliers of that class.
I live among lots of illegal Mexicans, and ones that got legalized, and Hispanics that trace their roots in the southern US back five centuries.
Here's the problem. When a border such as the 700 miles of the southern US is virtually unprotected, then normal passport and immigrant control procedures don't function. This means that you get bad buys coming in, people with communicable diseases such as TB coming in, etc.
Now since the whole world knows about the weakness of the southern border, it is a rational guess that terrorists would come in that way. They would prefer it over Passport Control at Logan. Or JFK. For the most part these individuals are going to look and act different than the average peasants (that is a correct definition of the average Mexican coming over, by the way).
But there isn't anyone to see and check them, is there?
So it's a real problem.