US border encounters with suspected terrorists jumped 15% just in the last month

The number of illegal aliens with suspected terror ties encountered at U.S. “land border ports of entry” increased 15% in one month, according to the latest U.S. Customs and Border Protection data.

Just the News (h/t Nita) A total amount of individuals who appear on the terrorist watchlist caught at ports of entry jumped from 382 to 442 after CBP publicly released its July 2023 operational data. So far into fiscal year 2023, 70 have been caught at the southwest border and 372 have been caught at the northern border. 

This represents the highest amount for this category, formally referred to as Terrorist Screening Dataset (TSDS), since fiscal year 2020.

The number of individuals on the terrorist watchlist encountered “between ports of entry” rose from 143 to 149 so far into fiscal year 2023, according to the latest data. Of the 149 total, 146 have been encountered at the southwest border and 3 have been encountered at the northern border, which is the highest amount for this category of encounters since at least fiscal year 2017, the earliest year on the CBP data chart.

California Republican Rep. Darrell Issa pressed Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on the status of the suspected terrorists encountered at the U.S. border during a House Judiciary Committee hearing in July. Issa asked Mayorkas how many suspected terrorists have been deported, put in jail or released but Mayorkas didn’t answer. Instead, he vowed to provide the information to Issa at a later date, yet, almost 1 month later, he still hasn’t.

labama Republican Rep. Mike Rogers, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, shared his reaction to the latest CBP data involving suspected terrorists at the border, saying “While the Biden Administration conveniently avoids even thinking about the Southern border, Muslim terrorists understand fully that the border is a point of weakness for our country.”

“Biden’s open border policy is a dangerous vulnerability for our national security, and these numbers only prove that terrorists are exploiting that weakness,” said Rogers.

FOX News Many of the terror-linked illegal migrants are affiliated with groups such as ISIS, Hezbollah, the Pakistani Taliban, and others. At least five of them were separately prosecuted in North America for various crimes, including attempted murder, lying to the FBI about terrorism involvement, and providing material support to a terrorist organization.

However, since terrorism-related statistics are often classified, the actual number of detained terrorists is likely much higher than we know from public records.

“Most information relevant to addressing the question of how often terrorist suspects were apprehended at, or migrating to, the border would reside in government intelligence database systems exempt from public disclosure, and no collection of relevant publicly available material could be found,” CIS explains.

Based on information from intelligence sources, CIS states that at least 100 migrants from “countries of interest” who matched U.S. terrorist “watch lists” were apprehended “at or en route to the southern border” between 2012-2017.