The month of October alone saw the arrest of 40 different suspects on the FBI’s terror watchlist as they attempted to cross the border into the United States.
According to the New York Post, nine individuals were arrested attempting to sneak across the border, while another 31 were stopped by authorities at various ports of entry, and were subsequently arrested upon identification. Of the 31 who attempted to enter legally, 25 tried to come across the Canadian border while six tried to cross the southern border.
The terror watchlist was first established by the FBI after the 9/11 attacks, initially consisting of known terrorists who are not American citizens, but later expanded to include potential threats and associates of known threats. The actual list of names is kept secret for security purposes.
Customs and Border Protection (CBP) said that, overall, a total of 98 people on the terror watchlist have attempted to cross the border at some point during the Fiscal Year 2022. In Fiscal Year 2021, by contrast, just 16 suspects were apprehended; in both 2020 and 2019, only three terror watchlist suspects were arrested each year.
The terror suspects are generally understood to be taking advantage of the Biden Administration’s open-borders approach to immigration, with the Administration welcoming illegal aliens and promising taxpayer-funded benefits, such as healthcare, housing, and education, to those who come here illegally. As a result, illegal immigration has surged to historic levels, with over 2 million encounters at the southern border in 2022 alone, not including those who completely evaded detection, known as “gotaways.”