Border Patrol’s apprehension of individuals on the terrorist watchlist at the southern border are on track to surpass the previous record, according to new U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) data.
Agents at the U.S.-Mexico border arrested 69 individuals whose names appeared on the terror watchlist in the first five months of fiscal year 2023, compared to 98 captured in all of fiscal year 2022, according to CBP. Meanwhile, migrant encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border have surpassed 1 million for the first five months of fiscal year 2023, according to CBP data.
CBP encountered more than 2.3 million migrants at the southern border in fiscal year 2022.
“Anybody that doesn’t think that serious threats to this country are sneaking in right now is naïve,” former Border Patrol Chief Rodney Scott previously told the Daily Caller News Foundation of terror watchlist apprehensions.
Current Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz testified to the House Homeland Security Committee Wednesday that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) lacks “operational control” of the southern border.
Ortiz also said that more than 385,000 illegal migrants evaded arrest between October 2022 and February 2023.
Terrorist operatives are known to have viewed the southern border as a route to carry out their nefarious activities. The FBI reportedly previously uncovered that an alleged Islamic State member plotted to assassinate former President George W. Bush with the help of other terrorist operatives with whom he planned to cross the Mexico border.
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