Wray testified Tuesday before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, where he said the FBI "cannot and do not discount the possibility that Hamas or another foreign terrorist organization may exploit the current conflict to conduct attacks here on our own soil."
Wray's testimony comes after Fox News reported two weeks ago that Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has encountered thousands of "special interest aliens" since 2021. Special interest aliens are people from countries identified by the U.S. government as having conditions that promote or protect terrorism or potentially pose some sort of national security threat to the U.S.
There have also been more than 1.5 million “gotaways” that touched U.S. soil during Joe Biden’s time as president.
Meanwhile, the number of encounters with people on the terror screening data set, known as the watchlist, hit a new record in fiscal year 2023. There were 154 encounters at the northern and southern borders among ports of entry — more than the last six years combined, and 505 encountered at the ports of entry.
A CBP memo last week warned staff of the risk of terrorists engaged in the Israel-Hamas war attempting to enter the U.S. across the southern border, Fox News reported.
Wray would not answer whether members of Hamas, Hezbollah or other Iranian-backed terrorist groups had illegally crossed the southern border and are now here.
A well-known military unit from Lebanon-based Hezbollah is called Unit 910, which is used for planning and executing terror attacks. Fears and concerns that Unit 910 is operating inside the United States go back decades, which is not an unfounded fear. The Department of Justice arrested two U.S. citizens in 2017, and a second in 2019, for working with Hezbollah to surveil targets in the United States and Panama.
Describing his questions to Wray at the Senate hearing, Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) told the "Washington Watch" program he wanted to "wake up" the American public about the terrorist danger facing the country that Israel experienced Oct. 7.
"Could that happen here? I don't want it to happen here," Scott said. "So my question was what's our risk in America to Hamas and Hezbollah and other terrorist groups."
Yet Democrats are unwilling to unite with Republicans to bring the southern border under control, he said, and the problems aren’t limited to potential terrorism.
“Here's what I don't understand. I don't care whether you're Republican or Democrat, you should love your family, right? So, 70,000 people are dying from a fentanyl overdose a year because there's an open border, I mean, why don't the Democrats want to solve this?” Scott asked show host Tony Perkins.
Terrorism, however, is at the forefront of security considerations so Wray said the Hamas attacks could inspire other groups in the way ISIS did roughly a decade ago.
ISIS emerged as an off-shoot of al Qaeda in 2014, taking control of large parts of Iraq and Syria, raising its black flag in victory and declaring the rebirth of a “caliphate,” a political-religious state that existed in the centuries following the death of the prophet Muhammad.
It took six years of fighting in Iraq and Syria before the U.S. and its allies could claim victory against ISIS.
“We assess that the actions of Hamas and its allies will serve as an inspiration, the likes of which we haven’t seen since ISIS launched its so-called caliphate several years ago. The on-going war in the Middle East has raised the threat of an attack against Americans in the United States to a whole other level,” Wray said.
Scott asked Wray if the country is safer since Joe Biden took office.
After a long pause, the FBI director chose his words carefully in his response.
“What I would say to you is the terror threats have elevated, but I also think there are a lot of things the country has done throughout law enforcement to be better prepared to deal with them,” Wray said.
Although government officials are compelled to testify in Congressional hearings, Scott said Senate Republicans struggle to get answers because they don’t control the agendas of the meetings.
“They either don’t respond or have redacted information (on documents) unless Democrats care about the issue,” Scott said.
