Former law enforcement officials have been issuing warnings about a renewed threat of terrorism in the United States as the Biden Administration has failed to address the rise in terror suspects sneaking into the country via the southern border.
As reported by Just The News, a recent report by the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Office of the Inspector General (OIG), an incident occurred last year in which a terrorist was released into the United States by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) shortly after his apprehension. The terrorist was then allowed to roam freely throughout the country for about two weeks before he was arrested again by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
After he was initially apprehended in April of 2022, the terror watchlist suspect was released “without providing information requested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Terrorist Screening Center (TSC) that would have confirmed the migrant was a positive match with the Terrorist Screening Data Set (Terrorist Watchlist),” according to the OIG report. He was finally arrested again on May 6th, but the arrest was delayed due to “challenges transferring documentation while planning to arrest the migrant and obtaining GPS data while conducting the arrest.”
Mark Morgan, the former CBP Commissioner during the Trump Administration, described the report as “a huge black eye” for the Biden Administration’s border enforcement efforts – or lack thereof – as well as counterterrorism operations meant to keep the homeland safe. Under the Biden Administration, Morgan added, the main objective of the Border Patrol now “is not to secure the border, your job is to process and release illegal aliens as fast as possible.”
“[W]e know they’ve encountered an unprecedented number, hundreds of illegal aliens that are on the terrorist screening database,” said Morgan in an interview. “Think about how many potential, would-be illegal aliens that could serve as a potential national security threat are among the 1.7 million. We literally could have the next terrorist sleeper cell in the United States planning the next terrorist attack, and we would have no idea. That’s fact, it’s not hyperbole.”
The total number of encounters with suspected terrorists at the southern border has reached record highs under the Biden Administration. Thus far in Fiscal Year 2023, CBP has, by its own numbers, apprehended at least 464 known or suspected terrorists at the southern border. That amount comes close to surpassing the overall total of apprehended terror suspects in the prior fiscal year, at 478.