Despite the paucity of reporting on the problem, the fundamentalist Muslim threat south of the border has been explored and documented.

In May 2003, the Senate Committee on the Judiciary hearing, “Narco-Terrorism: International Drug Trafficking and Terrorism—A Dangerous Mix," took a hard, cold look at the problem. The nearly 1-inch thick fine print transcript of the hearing documented Hezbollah and other Middle East terrorist organizations' undeniable presence in the region.

Two years later, in April 2005, the Defense Department's Foreign Military Studies Office explored the problem in its report, "Terrorism in Mexico and Central America ."

More recently, US Southern Command senior analyst Renee Novakoff wrote in the article "Islamic Terrorist Activities in Latin America: Why the Region and the USShould be Concerned ," in Air & Space Power Journal that "while the world is focused on the war in the Middle East and countering Islamic terrorist group activities there and in South Asia and to a lesser extent the US and Europe, there is only periodic focus on other regions vulnerable to Islamic terrorist activity," like "Latin America, the Caribbean and Africa."

Novakoff's paper "describes a consistent pattern of Islamic extremist activity over the past twenty years [throughout Latin America] that ranges from revenue generation and logistic support to more sinister activities. This paper makes the case for why US, Latin American, and Caribbean leaders need to be diligent in halting the ongoing terrorist-related activity in those regions."

Novakoff reiterated her concerns in interviews with Homeland Security Today, noting that she found the findings of Operation Cazando Anguilas disturbing.

Earlier this year, the RAND Corporation explored terrorist infiltration in Latin America in its larger study of the security threat south of the border, “Security in Mexico: Implications for US Policy Options .”

In April, Interpol Secretary General Ronald Noble, a former top US Justice Department official, warned attendees of a little-covered meeting of the National Association of Former Border Patrol Officers that Al Qaeda's ties to the ruthless Central American gangs MS-13 and M-18 (whose members have been tapped to provide transportation security for terrorists being smuggled to the United States) pose a clear and present danger to the American homeland.

These are the very same Latino gangs that the August Homeland Security Today reportrevealed not only serve as henchmen for Mexico’s narco-cartels—including running cartel operations in the US—but who also have been recruited to provide security for suspected terrorists being smuggled into the United States. What's more disconcerting, though, is that gang members are being converted to fundamentalist Islam, according to Operation Cazando Anguilas.

As far back as 2000 there were discussions among US counter-gang law enforcement officials about unconfirmed rumors that MS-13 members had converted to Islam, but few took the rumors seriously because it was believed at the time that these and other Latino gangs wouldn't work for terrorist organizations no matter how much money they were offered.

But this belief was misplaced.

As Max Manwaring, a Latin American specialist who holds the General Douglas MacArthur Chair and is Professor of Military Strategy at the US Army War College, told Homeland Security Today, “the nexus between gangs, other transnational criminal organizations and Islamic fundamentalists is what gangs do and have done for centuries,” and that “gangs acting as carriers, security escorts, moving currency, and acting as 'enforcers' is also what gangs do and have done for centuries (in the case of the Maras, it's only been since the 1990s).” Gangs have always reached agreements, made treaties and pacts and negotiated with potential partners, he added.