The House Judiciary Committee released a report Monday in which it found that 99 illegals released into the United States from the southern border are known names from the government’s terror watchlist.
Rep. Tom McClintock (R-California) believes a coordinated terrorist attack, or the unchecked violence from cartel-controlled areas of Mexico – scenes Americans might only see in movies and television now – is unavoidable given current immigration realities.
“That’s what keeps me awake at night. We don’t know what but it’s coming,” McClintock said on Washington Watch Tuesday.
The watchlist, maintained by the Department of Justice, is formally known as the Terrorist Screening Database.
From 2021-2023 U.S. Border Patrol has encountered illegals from 36 countries, many of them with high terrorist profiles such as Afghanistan, Lebanon, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, Yemen and others.
Almost 35,000 Chinese nationals have crossed the southern border, the report states.
“So far during fiscal year 2024, Border Patrol has encountered tens of thousands of illegal aliens nationwide from countries that could present national security risks, including 2,134 Afghan nationals, 33,347 Chinese nationals, 541 Iranian nationals, 520 Syrian nationals, and 3,104 Uzbek nationals,” the report said.
These are the numbers that we know about. The report also mentions almost 2 million known “gotaways” that made it into the country without being processed.
'All of this was preventable'
“All of this was preventable. All of this can be prevented again, but it's going to take a big change in public policy,” McClintock said.
Entering America has become even easier with the Customs and Border Patrol’s CBP One app, and that was the method used by at least three illegals with potential ties to ISIS.
At least another 34 members of the terror watchlist remain in DHS custody, the report said.
“We should all be grateful to the House Judiciary Committee for putting the work into getting these numbers from the Department of Homeland Security and showing them to the public,” Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, told show host Jody Hice.
One of the main purposes of the app is to “kind of launder the status of people who want to come into the country and can’t qualify for a visa,” Vaughan said.
“We've known since 9-11 that the terrorists consider exploiting a country's immigration system to be the best way to get into the country. In the 9-11 plot, they had to actually get visas at U. S. consulates. Now they don't even have to do that. They can just traipse across our border knowing that they're going to be allowed into this country and that even if they are on the terror watch list, they still may be allowed to enter this country,” Vaughan said.
The gotaways are the biggest problem, McClintock said.
“You have a free ride anywhere you want to go, free snacks, free clothes, free medical care, free meals, free legal assistance, free cell phones, free housing. Within six months, you get worker authorization. When your case comes up years from now and you're ordered deported, the administration won't enforce that order. So, under those circumstances, why would anybody want to evade the Border Patrol?” McClintock asks.
Only two reasons to bypass Border Patrol
Illegals only turn down those gifts if they’re hiding a criminal record or if they intend to commit crimes elsewhere in the U.S., McClintock said.
“The terrorist threat is magnified greatly. I'm really concerned about two things. Either we're going to see a coordinated terrorist attack in the near future, or we're going to see the kind of cartel violence that's become commonplace in Mexico and is now moving into our cities and towns,” he said.
Last fall, FBI Director Christopher Wray told the House Committee on Homeland Security that gotaways are a “source of great concern. I can tell you the threats that come from the other side of the border are very much consuming FBI field offices, not just in the border states.”
