Al Qaeda camps with Mexican cartels? That’s speculation, not fact

U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert, stressing border security, told a C-SPAN interviewer that our nation’s best-known terrorist foe has camps south of the Texas-Mexico border.

That’s not supported by evidence, we concluded, rating his claim as False.

The Tyler Republican said on C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal” April 17, 2013: “We know al Qaeda has camps over with the drug cartels on the other side of the Mexican border. We know that people are now being trained to come in and act like Hispanic when they’re radical Islamists. We know these things are happening and… it’s just insane not to protect ourselves.” (See the video to the right.)

We culled congressional testimony and news stories and queried experts without finding evidence proving out this claim, though there has been high-level speculation about terrorist groups teaming with Mexican cartels.

The full check is posted to the right.