. . . or so the drug informants have told federal agents. We've all heard the stories about the threat of would-be Islamic terrorists being smuggled across the US-Mexico border. Here's some good news about an unlikely ally: the drug cartels. Seems they're not so keen on helping the terrorists after all.

It's a rare positive twist for drug cartels entrenched along the 2,000-mile southern border, but they may be an unofficial ally in the U.S. war on terrorism.

Informants have told federal agents that drug traffickers fear that if a terrorist is caught on the border it would bring massive amounts of law enforcement attention to the region and possibly shut down well-traveled drug smuggling routes, Alonzo Peña, agent in charge of the U.S. Immigration and Customs and Enforcement office in San Antonio said here Thursday.

"They don't want it because it hurts their business," Peña, who oversees criminal investigations of drug and immigrant smugglers in a South Texas region that includes the border from Del Rio to Brownsville, told about 70 people at an immigration forum at Texas A&M University-Kingsville.

This doesn't mean the threat we've been told about is illusory. All of the methods illegal aliens use to get across are still available to them. What it does appear to mean (assuming the veracity of the drug informants) is that at least one fear is unfounded. Getting across the border, for the average laborer-type illegal immigrant, is a deadly and difficult enterprise with a high risk of capture and return. Many are caught while trying to cross. Others die in the desert. Others are captured somewhere along the journey to the big city.

The drug cartels have established ways of getting around all of these problems. It would be a good thing if the terrorists didn't have access to the same high-speed, low risk trafficking route and methods used by the drug runners.