Terrorist bombings that killed 3 and wounded and maimed over 260 at the finish line of the Boston Marathon on April 15 prompted the militarized “lockdown” of an American city for days, as police in full combat gear took part in a massive manhunt that may have given us a glimpse of our future.

As the unarmed populace was locked down, police used surveillance-camera video to identify the terrorists, Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, Chechens who had immigrated to the United States along with their family just one year after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.  The Tsarnaevs reportedly arrived in the United States on tourist visas and were granted asylum.  At the time, the Russians were engaged in a second war with Chechen separatists who were increasingly influenced by Islam.  But the Tsarnaevs never lived in Chechnya: They had resided in Kyrgyzstan before moving to Dagestan in the Russian Federation.  Nevertheless, they likely misrepresented themselves as war refugees: Russian-media accounts claim the Tsarnaevs entered the United States via Turkey, where Chechen refugees had gathered.

Some reports claim the father, Anzor, worked in law enforcement before leaving Russia.  The Tsarnaevs’ mother, Zubeidat, is reportedly an Avar, making the terrorists only half-Chechen, though older son Tamerlan in particular seems to have identified strongly with his Chechen kin.  Both parents (they are divorced) eventually decided to move back to Russia.  Zubeidat’s decision to return to the land of persecution may have had something to do with her arrest for shoplifting in the United States.

Contrary to the media hand-wringing over the plight of the refugee family, often portrayed as having been alienated by an unwelcoming America that was at least partly to blame for the two young men becoming terrorists, Dzhokhar and Tamerlan were treated well.  Dzhokhar was the captain of his high-school wrestling team, was a popular student, was awarded a college scholarship, and was seen by his peers as a “normal” American boy who smoked pot and listened to rap music (which, alas, says something about the new “normal”).  Tamerlan, an amateur heavyweight boxing champion in New England, married an American who converted to Islam and bore his child.  By some accounts, he and his wife, Katherine Russell Tsarnaev, had for a time lived in the upper-middle-class home of her parents.

In spite of the September 11 attacks and the obvious Islam/terrorism connection, U.S. officials granted entry and asylum to a Muslim family whose people were then engaged in anti-Russian jihad.  That Chechens have a well-deserved reputation for criminal activity and violence in Russia was apparently never a consideration.  Americans yielded to the Tsarnaevs’ “diversity,” accommodating themselves to the aliens.  Katherine Russell became a Muslim and assimilated to Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s culture.  Tamerlan and his family reportedly lived off welfare benefits before Katherine began to work as many as 80 hours per week to support them, leaving time for her husband to immerse himself in the internet world of jihad.  What’s more, in 2009, Tamerlan was arrested and convicted on a domestic-violence charge.  U.S. authorities could have deported him, but failed to do so.

As of this writing, the surviving Tsarnaev brother, Dzhokhar, has told police that U.S. invasions of Muslim countries motivated the Boston bombings.  That should not have been news to U.S. law enforcement: According to press accounts of a Senate Intelligence Committee session on the bombings, FBI officials had been warned multiple times by their Russian counterparts that Tamerlan Tsarnaev was a potential terrorist threat.  In 2011, the FBI questioned him.  The FBI subsequently asked for more information from the Russian side, with no response.  Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s name was added to a terrorism database; yet a 2012 trip to Dagestan and Chechnya went unnoticed, probably because his name was misspelled by the airline.  Tamerlan re-entered the United States and rejoined his wife and child six months later without a hitch, though his application for citizenship was never granted.  On September 11, 2012, however, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev became a U.S. citizen.

The “lockdown” of Boston is indicative of the ongoing transformation of the United States into a surveillance state.  Pat-downs and scanners at airports, surveillance cameras, and attempts to disarm the citizenry are the inevitable consequences of suicidal liberalism embracing globalism, open borders, and the Other.  It is a deadly embrace motivated by the oldest sin in the world: rebellion against authority—in this case, the authority of hearth and home and its superior claims of kinship and faith.  Even the most high-tech security systems imaginable will inevitably fail as they are overwhelmed by a flood of often hostile and dangerous immigrants.  And the transformation could be sealed if the latest attempt at a mass amnesty for illegal aliens succeeds.