Dang, the Border Patrol DID find a terrorist

You’d think that when the Border Patrol manages to find a real, live terrorist, you’d read and hear all about it from the lunatic “seal the border” crowd.  Nah…

The BBC was vaguely interested, but then again, it’s their old news, not ours

Paul Brennan was arrested by officers at a border checkpoint in southern Texas on Monday night.

The US Border Patrol said Brennan was now in custody and was awaiting deportation.

It said he had been serving a 23-year prison sentence in Northern Ireland on charges of possessing a bomb and a firearm.Brennan is understood to have produced an out-of-date immigration document at the Sarita checkpoint near Brownsville.

He was identified through fingerprinting after a search of his background through the Joint Terrorism Task Force and Interpol.

“The subject was arrested and is pending deportation proceedings back to his country of origin,” said the US Border Patrol.

That’s not from the U.S. press, but from the BBC. Seems Paul Brennan was released from a Northern Irish prison several years ago, under a peace accord between the British occupation government and the Irish insurgents, and moved to the United States. The British dropped extradition efforts in 2000, but he was still wanted in connection with a 1983 jailbreak.

And Sarita Texas is not exactly on the border. Being the only inhabited spot in Kenedy County, Texas (400 and some law abiding citizens, last heard of when Dick Cheney shot an old man in the face), it is — by default — the inland border checkpoint on US 77 coming north from Brownsville/Harlingen (you know, Padre Island).

People here along the border are getting used to (not that we like it) these damn security checks (mostly because you’re crusing along at 75 or 80 miles per hour, and then have to stop at what’s basically a big toll-booth in the middle of nowhere and answer questions from armed bureaucrats). How much this costs us taxpayers I can’t say. A shitload.

Anyway, nabbing a guy whose been in the U.S. (and may not have been in Mexico) for several years apparently makes those “show us ze papers” stops all worthwhile… right?

Ronald D. Vitiello, chief patrol agent for the Rio Grande Valley Sector, said: “The primary purpose of checkpoint operations is to support enhanced national security efforts that deter, detect and prevent the threat of further terrorist attacks against the United States.

So… if this is such a great idea, why not random checkpoints everywhere? What do we have to lose. And, hey, we might stumble across a possible ex-baddie from some other country now and again.