I was reading Michelle Malkin’s blog and she raised a couple important points I had missed.

How did they get here?  Answer: Three came across the Mexican border

So, what about the three illegal alien Jersey Jihadist suspects–the Duka brothers? Were they smuggled across the border or stowaways? That’s what the feds are checking out now.

They’re also checking to see if the three other accused jihadi plotters–one a naturalized US citizen, the other two green card holders–lied on their applications.

Yeah, that would be a shocker.

***

Update: Shocked, shocked…

Three brothers charged in the alleged Fort Dix terror plot have been living illegally in the U.S. for more than 23 years and were accepted as Americans by neighbors and friends who had no idea they would scheme to attack military bases and slaughter GIs.

A federal law enforcement source confirmed to FOX News that the three — Dritan “Anthony” or “Tony” Duka, 28; Shain Duka, 26; and Eljvir “Elvis” Duka, 23 — also accumulated 19 traffic citations, but because they operated in “sanctuary cites,” where law enforcement does not routinely report illegal immigrants to homeland security, none of the tickets raised red flags.

The brothers entered the United States near Brownsville, Texas, in 1984, the source said, which would put their ages at 1 to 6 when they crossed the border.

For those of us who take the plot seriously, this should be a yet another wake up call for border security and enforcement of immigration laws.

And a Huge Wake Up Call about the counter productivity of the whole stupid Sanctuary City thing for illegal aliens.  How many more times do we need to be shown proof that these laws assist criminals?

She also noted this grim fact:  One of the 6 was an ethnic Albanian who was given sanctuary at Fort Dix during the Serbian war.  And he just happened to be a trained sniper.  So much for the innocent pizza driver. 

Jersey Jihadists, open borders, and the thanks we get

Yesterday morning, I noted early on that Fort Dix had been a refuge for ethnic Albanians from Kosovo. As I suspected, Agron Abdullahu, one of the Jersey Jihadist suspects, was indeed one of the thousands of ethnic Albanian refugees from Kosovo whom we welcomed there in 1999 (hat tip: Allah):

A trained sniper during the war in Kosovo, Abdullahu and his family were among thousands given safe haven in the U.S. under the Clinton administration to protect them from the Serbs. For months, they would be housed in refugee camps at Ft. Dix, a circumstance which now points to a terribly ironic twist.

Terribly ironic? Or sadly predictable?

No kidding.

Read her syndicated column for more:

http://jewishworldreview.com/michelle/malkin050907.php3

I also would have to say that the NY Post got it:

THE WAR AT HOME

The arrests of six foreign-born Muslim men in a conspiracy to attack soldiers at Fort Dix in New Jersey underscores yet again the threat Islamist terror poses to America.

As if such emphasis is necessary.

The authorities first learned of the plot in January 2006, when an alert video-store worker notified authorities of a “disturbing” video that he’d been asked to convert to DVD.

The six, from Yugoslavia and the Middle East, were arrested Monday night and charged with plotting to “kill as many soldiers as possible.”

The arrests tracked similar post-9/11 operations in New York, including:

* The Buffalo-area “Lackawanna Six” plot in 2002.

* The conviction of Pakistani immigrant Shahawar Matin Siraj for planning to bomb the Herald Square subway station.

* The arrest and conviction of two Albany-based Islamists on charges of money-laundering and supporting a foreign terrorist organization.

The FBI criminal complaint alleges that the Fort Dix Six considered other military and governmental targets before settling on Fort Dix.

The father of one suspect owned a nearby pizzeria; the group planned to use that to gain access to the base. They were caught on tape discussing the use of mortars and rocket-propelled grenades in an attack.

They were taken into custody while trying to buy automatic weapons from an informant.

Yes, the White House downplayed the possibility that this cell had any connection to al Qaeda or other international terror organizations.

So what?

Just because there is no evidence, as of yet, linking these individuals to other terror groups doesn’t mean that such evidence won’t turn up.

More importantly, terrorism is as much a state of mind as it is a structured operation. Plots can spring up almost organically; that some are not explicitly tied to al Qaeda is no cause for relief.

Quite the opposite: In many ways, it makes tracking these plots that much more difficult.

No doubt lawyers for the Fort Dix Six soon will be claiming that their clients weren’t engaged in a “real” plot - indeed, that they are victims of government-inspired “entrapment.”

So, here’s a question.

Why is it that so many of these individuals, whether in Buffalo, Albany, Fort Dix - or Dearborn, Mich., or the Pacific northwest - are so eager to be “entrapped” into plotting to harm Americans and/or U.S. institutions?

It is particularly ironic that this cell emerged in Fort Dix.

Four of the suspects are ethnic Albanian who managed to become part of a community whose origins stretch back a decade: In 1999, the United States launched Operation Provide Refuge, which took in some 20,000 mostly Muslim refugees fleeing Serbian violence during Yugoslavia’s civil war.

Fort Dix became one of the American safe havens for the Kosovar refugees.

Then it became a target.

And the war goes on.

And we here at home sleep on, unaware of how close we keep coming to continued tragedy.