Yesterday PJ Media posted an article stating that the Obama Administration is closing nine border crossings in four states. Five of those border crossings are in Texas.

Just in case you need to be reminded of why securing the southern border is so critical, here is a link to a Washington Times article from February 2011.

The article at the Washington Times reports:

Three days after Ms. Napolitano spoke, the U.S. Border Patrol captured Said Jaziri, a radical Islamic cleric, hidden in the trunk of a car 50 miles east of San Diego. Mr. Jaziri, one of the imams who had called for the death of the Danish cartoonist behind the drawings of the Prophet Muhammad, purportedly paid a Mexican human-trafficking cartel $5,000 to smuggle him into the country. The court set his bail at $25,000. There is little to prevent him from posting bail and disappearing into the countryside, where he most certainly will find refuge among sympathetic supporters.

Mr. Jaziri’s capture is merely the latest in a long string of other-than-Mexican (OTM) arrests going back several years. A couple of days before the imam’s capture, Border Patrol officers found a discarded Iranian book of martyrdom along a well-known smuggling route. For all of the so-called martyrs, the book provided biographies, letters addressed to their families, and, in some cases, their last wills and testaments. Though U.S. officials do not know who discarded the book or when, we do know that it is the latest example of radical Islamist paraphernalia that has been found along the border.

Closing these border crossing stations is a threat to our national security. I am not as concerned about illegal aliens who come to America to work (although they are taking jobs from Americans) as I am with jihadists who have found an easy way to get unto the country untraced for nefarious purposes.