How many terror suspects reach the U.S. is at best an educated guess. However, with Biden’s open door, it’s got to be a bunch. From James Varney at realclearwire.com:
Hundreds of people on the FBI’s terrorist watchlist have almost certainly slipped into the United States amid millions of other illegal immigrants during the last three years, according to former federal officials and experts.
“You have to be extremely naïve to not be significantly concerned about this,” said Rodney Scott, former chief of U.S. Border Patrol from 2020 to 2021. “Regardless of what the Biden administration may claim, what it said during the campaign and the executive orders taken in January 2021 have been interpreted around the world as the border is open. You’re insane if you don’t think terrorists will use that to their advantage.”
In the aftermath of Hamas’ terrorist attack against Israel on Oct. 7, President Biden, without mentioning the border, told “60 Minutes” that the threat the U.S. could face from terrorists in the country had escalated.
Although the terrorist threat linked to the border crisis is impossible to quantify, some experts find the available numbers alarming. During Biden’s first three years, a record-shattering 6.5 million-plus immigrants have been “encountered” by border authorities. That pace is increasing: The most recent monthly figures, September’s, showed another record number of monthly encounters – 269,735.
At the same time, federal officials have seen an alarming increase in border crossers listed on the U.S. Terror Screening Dataset, the official name for what is commonly called the “terrorist watchlist.”
In fiscal 2023, which ends this month, Border Patrol agents have apprehended 172 such people, all but three of them along the southwest border. When all U.S. places of entry are added – by land, sea and air – another 564 people on the watchlist were caught, bringing the total to 736.
By way of comparison, between fiscal 2017 and 2019, Border Patrol agents apprehended a total of 11 people on the terrorist watchlist. Scott sounded an alarm to Congress in the 2021 period when the total jumped to 16. “When a number doubles it gets your attention, and we’ve moved way beyond that,” he says now.
