Another scoop from Bill Gertz of the Washington Times. He cites an intelligence report indicating that 25 Chechen terrorists entered the United States illegally via our southern border with Mexico:

The Chechen group is suspected of having links to Islamist terrorists seeking to separate the southern enclave of Chechnya from Russia, according to officials familiar with intelligence reports.

Members of the group, said to be wearing backpacks, secretly traveled to northern Mexico and crossed into a mountainous part of Arizona that is difficult for U.S. border security agents to monitor, said officials speaking on the condition of anonymity.

The intelligence report was supplied to the U.S. government in late August or early September and was based on information from an intelligence source that has been proved reliable in other instances, one official said.

A second U.S. official said the report is being investigated, but said it could not be determined whether the group of Chechens actually entered the country, as the intelligence source reported.

Yeah, maybe they’re a group of musicians with a gig in northern Mexico.

For more on the vulnerability of our southern border to terrorism, see here and here.

For a good example of head-in-the-sand thinking about the need to secure our southern border, see this Virginia Postrel post.