The number of people on the FBI’s terrorist watch list apprehended at the southern border soared to 78 in the first 11 months of fiscal year 2022, a more than fivefold increase over the previous year.
SO WHAT
Mass illegal migration isn’t just a humanitarian crisis, it’s also a clear and present danger.
THE NUMBERS
Customs and Border Protection agents apprehended 12 illegal migrants with names matching individuals’ in the Terrorist Screening Database trying to cross the U.S.-Mexico border last month, as the total number of migrant encounters has also broken records.
The terror watch list contains the names of individuals flagged by U.S. intelligence for possible association with terrorist groups.
- CBP screening can flag people who are not in the database but share a name with someone who is.
CONNECTING THE DOTS
Contrary to the Biden administration’s claims that the border is “secure,” the total number of encounters with illegal migrants at the southern border surpassed 2.1 million in the first eleven months of fiscal year 2022.
- That was up from 1.7 million for all of fiscal year 2021, according to CBP — not including an estimated 900,000 illegal migrants who crossed the border without being caught in 2021-2022.
- The influx of illegal migrants has overwhelmed CBP personnel, making it easier for cartels to smuggle dangerous drugs across the border, with over 12,000 pounds of fentanyl seized so far year, compared to 10,600 pounds for all of 2021.
The chaos on the border could also enable terrorists to slip across, experts warn, as a growing number of migrants come from outside the Americas.
- In testimony to Congress in August, FBI director Christopher Wray identified the southern border as an area of “vulnerability that we know foreign terrorist organizations and others will seek to exploit.”
- In May, the FBI arrested Shihab Ahmed Shihab Shihab, an Iraqi ISIS member who was working to smuggle terrorists into the country across the southern border as part of a plot to assassinate former President George W. Bush.