Texas, USA - San Anonio reporter Todd Bensman produces a stunning account of the tenuous journey of one Chaldean family forced to leave Iraq under Islamist threats of beheading.  The horrific tale of a young Chaldean family forced to abandon everything and to wander the world in fear with an infant and toddler.  The Genocide of Christians in Iraq continues to fall on deaf ears as the world plays politics and abandons the peaceful native Iraqi Christians.  Iraqi Christians are left to be slaughtered by Islamists or tortured for ransom money to fuel their insurgency.    

The journey north from Guatemala through Mexico to the Texas border lasted 17 days.  Finally, on the evening of Feb. 26, 2006, the young family of four saw the river come into view.  Weary and beaten, with the baby starting to fuss, they drove right up to the Rio Grande.

George and his wife, Baida, were Iraq refugees. They fled their homeland for Detroit because Muslim extremists had made two things very clear: They didn't like the family's Christian faith, for one. But what was worse, to the Islamic gunmen prowling the neighborhood, were the sons' names, George and Toni, which seemed to lionize U.S. President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

The decision to hire a smuggler to get them to the United States was clinched after militants told George Sr., a milk delivery man, that he was next on the beheading list for being an "infidel Christian," and the people running the nursery that cared for the couple's two children while Baida, a hair stylist, was working became untrustworthy.

"People started calling him George Bush in the nursing school and neighborhood, so we stopped sending him to school in fear of him getting kidnapped," Baida would later tell U.S. authorities.  "Same thing with my young baby, Toni; they called him Tony Blair."

The journey from Iraq to the Texas border had been expensive and risky, especially moving inconspicuously with two small children through hostile, foreign terrain. But looking at the river, the family realized that this was more than just a border. It was a river. They would have to swim across. The problem is that none of them knew how.

Baida refused. George, too, couldn't bring himself to do it. It was the Mexican laborers waiting nearby for darkness who got them going. Amused, the men urged the couple on, offering to help with the children.

My God, George thought, I came all this distance and there's America, finally, just right over there. And now you just have to do it.  So, with the help of the Mexicans, George waded in, carrying his older son over his head.  The family had come too far to go back. The family's full name has been withheld to prevent retaliation against other relatives still trapped in Iraq.

They had done what hundreds of thousands of other Christian Iraqi families have done since the invasion: They sold everything in the face of horrific and systematic religious persecution, and fled north to Damascus, Syria or Amman, Jordan.

Out of options, an increasing number of them are proceeding toward the United States, illegally.

Alarms go off along U.S. borders among federal law enforcement authorities whenever a migrant from a Muslim country in the Middle East, North Africa or South Asia is discovered crossing illegally. Thousands have since 9/11, and when caught they're automatically labeled "special-interest aliens" who can be subjected to FBI interrogation and investigation as potential terrorists.

Since the war in Iraq spawned aggressive insurgent activity against U.S. troops, the alarms have become especially shrill when the captured migrants are Iraqis thought to carry with them the prospect of insurgency on U.S. soil.  A six-month investigation into the world of special-interest immigrants, however, shows that many, if not a majority, of the Iraqis caught crossing illegally into Texas and elsewhere along the southern border are hardly Islamic terrorists. They are victims of Islamic terrorists.

Chaldean Christians are an ancient ethnic minority of Catholics that made up about four per cent of Iraq's population. More than 600,000, half the Chaldean population in Iraq, are thought to have fled the war to neighboring countries.  According to interviews in the U.S., Syria and Jordan, Chaldean refugees say the American-led war has unleashed Islamist militants who have targeted them because of their religion in vicious campaigns of murder, kidnapping and forced property expropriations.

Ordinarily, religious persecution can qualify victims for U.S. resettlement visas. But the U.S. State Department has not issued visas to Chaldeans and won't recognize them as especially persecuted for their religion, asserting that they are among many groups amid Iraq's sectarian strife who could make the claim. So they wait.  While most are sitting out the war as refugees in countries like Syria and Jordan, other Chaldean Christians have chosen not to.

"They know there was nothing for them, so therefore they have to create an act of desperation like this," said Joseph Kassab, executive director of the Detroit-based Chaldean Federation of America. "Those people, most of them, were able to get some money, or sell homes before they fled Iraq, and the smugglers know about them and so they go to them and talk about smuggling them."

U.S. Customs and Border Protection figures show that only about 100 Iraqis have been caught at the borders since 9/11 through the end of last year, more than 60 of them along the Southwest border and about 20 in Texas. Those relatively small numbers don't include this year when refugee outflows from Iraq have greatly increased.

Interviews with Christian Iraqis overseas and other anecdotal evidence suggest that the war is driving many more to the U.S. border.  In April, five Iraqi families with children were in detention at the federal government's T. Don Hutton Residential Centre in Taylor, Tex., after Border Patrol agents picked them up in Texas and California; a half-dozen were in custody in the San Diego area; 11 Iraqis were caught at a Mexican airport; and Belize authorities were still trying to figure out what to do with 10 U.S.-bound Iraqis abandoned by their smuggler.

Young Iraqi Christian men like Hassan, who worked as an interpreter for the U.S. 82nd Airborne Division until Islamists threatened to kill him, typify the situation. They came around one day to let him know he'd better convert.

 "It was, 'Hey you, if you don't want to be Muslim, we're going to kill you.' But I'm not changing my religion. Why should I?"  He left his military job and went to Damascus about six months ago. Hassan later decided a more prudent course was to plot a route to Texas.

He said Hispanic soldiers in the U.S. army with whom he was serving had told him how easy it was to cross the Mexico-Texas border, and they offered the help of their own families in Mexico. He plans to take advantage of the offer. 

Long before 9/11 and the war in Iraq, Chaldean Christians were sneaking across the U.S. southern border, mostly hoping to join relatives among the roughly 250,000 Chaldeans who have already settled in major cities such as San Diego and Detroit.

Some Chaldeans have the financial means and the will to find any way possible to immigrate. In Iraq as in the U.S., they tend to hold jobs as educators, professionals, and entrepreneurs.  Several U.S. prosecutions of smuggling rings that have specialized in Middle East clientele show that Chaldean Iraqis have long been favored because they tend to be affluent, or have relatives in the U.S. who can pay smuggling fees up to $25,000.

For the past 18 months, the Chaldean Federation has lobbied the U.S. State Department and Department of Homeland Security to issue 160,000 visas for Iraqi Christians on grounds that they have suffered religious persecution.  "We would like them all to be admitted, like the Vietnamese," Kassab said. "They took 135,000 Vietnamese refugees in 10 months under President Ford. We want something similar to that."

The initiative has run headlong into a domestic debate over Iraq war policy in which the Bush administration is not eager to acknowledge a permanent refugee problem by resettling large numbers.  Last year, the Bush administration granted about 5,500 admission visas for all of the Middle East, of which only 500 were earmarked for Iraqis, and none specifically for Chaldean Christians.

The number of visas earmarked for the Middle East next fiscal year will increase to 25,000 from about 7,000. The Chaldeans expect some of them.   Government officials have reportedly told Chaldean Christian leaders in the U.S. that a need to conduct thorough security checks on all Iraqis seeking resettlement has stalled the process.

Peter Eisenhauer, spokesman for the State Department's Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration, cited a different reason.  "We weren't going to do a population like that because there are a number of different Iraqi groups that are also vulnerable and at risk," he said.

The experience of several Chaldean Christian Iraqis caught crossing the Texas border shows the security dilemma homeland security personnel face when one is caught.  Iraqi refugee Aamr Bahnan Boles found himself detained and sentenced to six months in prison with two other Iraqi Christians because they could not prove who they were.

The federation's Kassab said he is well aware that border authorities especially fear that a real insurgent from Iraq might try to pose as a Chaldean Christian.   But Kassab said the federation has drafted a set of secret cultural and religious answers to questions that could be asked of any apprehended Iraqi who claims to be a Chaldean Christian.  There is no way on Earth that anyone [not Chaldean] can be trained to answer these questions," Kassab said.

Kassab said he may be making headway on the issue. Recently, he said, the federation was allowed to train 25 immigration asylum officers and judges in Chicago in how to identify a Chaldean Christian with a high degree of certainty.

Much anguish can be found in Detroit's churches and Chaldean-owned restaurants. The war in Iraq has engulfed these communities with news of murdered loved ones and displaced families.  There are mixed emotions about who is to blame for what has befallen the Chaldeans.  Under the regime of Saddam Hussein, many Chaldean Christians felt protected from radical Muslims. But since Saddam was ousted Islamic militias have ravaged Christian communities.

Father Jacob Yasso, who has presided over the Sacred Heart Church and Chaldean Community Centre on Detroit's West 7-Mile St. for more than 30 years, said he believes the United States owes admission to Chaldeans trapped and suffering overseas.  "America owes the Chaldeans justice," he said, sitting at his desk.

In the case of George and Baida, they sold everything they owned in Iraq. They raised $32,000 by selling their house, furniture, cars and salon equipment at cut-rate prices - then fled to Damascus.   There, Baida said, they found that "Everybody is planning to go someplace - everyone."

George said he easily found a smuggler, a Jordanian who gave no name and no information. He paid the smuggler $10,000. For that, the smuggler provided airline tickets and Guatemala and Cuba visas for the whole family, as well as arranging a safe house in Guatemala City.

The family flew to Moscow and then Cuba, where they spent three days in a hotel with no running water and buckets of water with which to flush toilets that didn't work. Once in Guatemala, the family settled in for a couple of months in a Guatemala City safe house, a tidy home owned by a woman named "Maria" who charged $100 a month rent.

She grew so attached to George and Toni that when the time came she personally arranged for the best Guatemala smuggler she could find to shepherd the family to the Texas border. The man only gave his name as "Miguel" and charged $15,000.

"He charged me extra because of the kids," George said. "I didn't care; I just wanted to get my kids to America."

The following weeks were a blur of transferring from car to truck to van, staying in safe houses or sleeping in cars, and hiding under blankets in the backs of pickups.  Miguel never once strayed from the family's side, his word given to Maria not to, and he made sure to provide all the family's needs.

Through it all, the parents worried constantly about what would happen to their children if they were caught, and even more about bandits and killers that were well-known to prey on immigrants like themselves. They fed the kids chicken, tortillas, rice and cookies.

When 9-month-old Toni would start to cry at a critical moment when silence was necessary, Baida would breast-feed him. A well-timed candy bar kept the older boy quiet when necessary.  After they swam the Rio Grande, Miguel told them: "This is America. You're safe now." They hugged Miguel and he turned back to the river.

Once on the Texas side, not far from the rural town of Los Indios, everyone else in the group scattered through the brush, leaving the family to stumble on in the dark.  Eventually, George found a convenience store and hailed a taxi, water still dripping from his clothes. He asked the cab driver to take the family to the nearest border patrol station.

When they arrived at one in Brownsville, George told the clerk on duty what most Chaldean Christians are taught to say in such situations.  "I am an Iraqi Christian. I want asylum."

Unlike other Iraqi special-interest immigrants, the family was released relatively quickly after submitting to interviews and a terror watch-list check. After all, how many real terrorists bring their toddlers on the mission?

They are now with George's brother in Muscogee, Mich., living in a small two-bedroom apartment.  They await a verdict on their political asylum claim in Brownsville.

In Michigan, George said he is looking forward to "a normal life in America" where he can send his two boys to good schools and no one will politicize their names.  To show his appreciation to his new country, he pledged one of his two boys to serve in the U.S. military - when they grow up.

"They have to serve their country," George Sr. said. "This country helped us, and we have to help America."