An illegal alien who was caught at the southern border has since admitted that he came into the country with the intention of “making a bomb,” presumably for the purpose of carrying out a terrorist attack against the United States.
Fox News reports that the illegal, Basel Bassel Ebbadi, is a 22-year-old from Lebanon and a member of the terrorist group Hezbollah. He was caught last week attempting to cross the border near El Paso, Texas. When interrogated by border agents, he admitted that he came to the U.S. to “try to make a bomb,” and that his destination was New York City.
Under further interrogation, Ebbadi admitted that he had trained with Hezbollah for at least seven years, and had been an active member for four years after that. His training focused primarily on carrying out “jihad,” which includes “killing people that was not Muslim,” he told interrogators in broken English.
Upon his confession, Ebbadi was put into isolation and referred to the Tactical Terrorism Response Team (TTRT) for making “terroristic threats to personnel.” Documents later revealed that Ebbadi has already been marked for deportation, although it has not yet been determined which country he will be deported to.
While the broader mass migration crisis remains a concern for many Americans, with the importation of gang members, drug dealers, killers, and rapists, an especially strong concern is the number of foreign terrorists who seek to take advantage of the porous southern border to infiltrate the country and carry out terrorist attacks on American soil.
In fiscal year 2022, border agents recorded 98 encounters with individuals who were on a terror watchlist. In 2023, that number skyrocketed to 172. There have already been 59 such encounters in the first four months of the 2024 fiscal year. The overall illegal immigration figures remain at nearly all-time highs, with 302,000 illegal alien encounters in December of 2023.