Tijuana Opens Muslim Migrant Shelter to Help U.S. Asylum Seekers as Illegal Immigration Soars

As the U.S. sets a record for illegal immigrant apprehensions along the southern border, a first-of-its- kind shelter opens in Tijuana, Mexico to accommodate a steady flow of Muslim migrants heading north via Latin America. A couple of years ago a San Diego-based group called Latina Muslim Foundation began raising funds to build the shelter “in response to the growing number of Muslim migrants south of the border,” according to a local news report. The 8,000-square-foot facility, which opened over the weekend, can accommodate “up to 150 asylum-seekers,” and will offer Muslim migrants housing, medical care, halal meals and legal services as they wait to enter the U.S. in the famously violent Mexican city that borders California.

Judicial Watch has for years reported on the increasing number of Muslim migrants—including from terrorist nations—entering the U.S. through the Mexican border and the timing of this influx could not be worse, during a record-breaking month for the U.S. Border Patrol. The latest agency figures show that more illegal immigrants—222,656—were apprehended at the southwest border in May than in any other month in history. The previous one-month record was set in March 2000, when the frontline Homeland Security agency reported 223,305 apprehensions. Additionally, federal agents have processed more than 1.5 million illegal immigrants this fiscal year. With three months till the end of the fiscal year, at the current rate the figure is sure to surpass the 2021 record of 1.7 million.

A quarter of the illegal alien encounters reported in May involved repeat offenders previously caught by federal agents this year, the latest government stats reveal. The breakdown shows that Mexicans account for the largest number of illegal border crossers in May, about 77,000, followed by Cubans (25,348), Guatemalans (21,382), Hondurans (19,491), Colombians (19,040), Nicaraguans (18,944), Haitians (10,418), Salvadorans (8,955), Brazilians (5,118), Venezuelans (5,078), Russians (3,394) and Ecuadoreans (3,045). This batch of records does not offer a breakdown that includes Muslims, but it has long been reported that the number is on the rise. Earlier this year an Arab news outlet reported that thousands of Muslims from the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Africa try to reach the U.S.-Mexico border every month. In the story the head of a religious immigrant organization in Brazil estimates that 20% of all people welcomed on their U.S.-bound journey in 2020 were Muslim.

In the last few years, a growing number of illegal aliens from terrorist nations—including Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh—have tried to enter the U.S. through Mexico, making the increase in Muslim asylum seekers and the effort to accommodate them in bordering Tijuana quite troublesome. In recent years, an alarming number of migrants from Bangladesh, a recruiting ground for terrorist groups such as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and Al-Qaeda Indian Subcontinent (AQIS), have been caught by federal agents along the U.S.-Mexico border. At the start of this fiscal year, which began in September, the Border Patrol encountered tens of thousands of illegal immigrants from dozens of countries, including Africa and the Middle East. In the first month alone the Border Patrol’s Del Rio Sector in Texas recorded 28,111 illegal aliens from more than 50 countries. They include Syria, Lebanon, Eritrea, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan, a central Asian nation that borders Afghanistan, which is controlled by the Taliban after the abrupt exit of U.S. troops.

It is worth noting that Mexico is a hotbed of Islamic terrorism that is concentrated in the American border region. As part of an ongoing investigation into the national security threats along the southern border, Judicial Watch has reported that Islamic jihadists are training in southern border towns near American cities and have joined forces with Mexican drug cartels to infiltrate the United States. Years ago, a high-ranking Homeland Security official confirmed to Judicial Watch that Mexican drug traffickers help Islamic terrorists stationed in Mexico cross into the U.S. to explore targets for future attacks. Among the jihadists that traveled back and forth through the southern border was a Kuwaiti named Shaykh Mahmood Omar Khabir, an ISIS operative who lives in the Mexican state of Chihuahua not far from El Paso. Another was a Saudi Al Qaeda operative, Adnan G. El Shurkrjumah, wanted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) during his undetected cross-border jaunts.