The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) announced recently that U.S. Border Patrol (USBP) agents released migrants from the Terror Watchlist. In a tweet from July 5, the CIS referenced a Homeland Security report which attributed the cause of the release to the increased number of migrants crossing the southern border.
“Border Patrol releases migrants from the FBI’s Terrorist Watchlist because border agents ‘were busy processing an increased flow of migrants,’” the CIS posted on Twitter.
According to CIS, an Office of the Inspector General (OIG) report entitled, “CBP Released a Migrant on a Terrorist Watchlist, and ICE Faced Information Sharing Challenges Planning and Conducting the Arrest”, said that on April 19, 2022, an unidentified migrant was released after being apprehended two days prior while crossing through an unfinished and abandoned section of the Trump administration's border wall near Yuma, Arizona.
Initially, this individual had been flagged as a suspected terrorist, but the determination was inconclusive, the CIS said. As per CIS, the report reveals that border agents “were busy processing an increased flow of migrants”, causing congestion at the region's central processing center. As a result, according to CIS, the suspect was released into the interior before the inconclusive alert could be resolved, contrary to protocol of addressing these matters promptly through established inter-agency procedures.
According to Trending Politics News, Representatives Jim Jordan (R-OH), James Comer (R-KY) and Mark Green (R-TN) wrote a letter to U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas which said, “‘known gotaways’ do not provide biometric or biographic information to USBP agents and continue their journey into the interior of the country without background checks against law enforcement databases.” The letter went on to say, “[t]errorists and other bad actors will attempt to exploit weaknesses in border security and vetting procedures to infiltrate the United States. We fear these known gotaways could also include illegal aliens with terrorist ties.”
Additionally, Trending Politics News said that since Joe Biden assumed office, there has been a troubling surge in the number of foreigners on the U.S. terrorist screening list attempting to illegally cross the border into the United States. During Donald Trump's last year as president, there were only three such incidents, which increased to 16 in Biden's first year. However, in 2023, the number has skyrocketed to 140 apprehensions, surpassing last year's record of 98 encounters, Trending Politics News said.
The Office of the Inspector General report highlights a national security threat resulting from Biden's mass migration crisis, with over 200 individuals on the FBI Terror Watchlist apprehended since 2020, CIS said. The crisis has weakened counterterrorism security programs at the southern border, increasing the risk of terror attacks, according to CIS. Instances of watch-listed migrants being released instead of detained have been reported, leading to concerns about security on both sides of the border.
