The United States Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has released new data that shows 16 individuals on the FBI’s terrorist watchlist were apprehended by Border Patrol agents in February 2022.
According to a report by Fox News, the total number of people on the watchlist attempting to enter the United States this fiscal year has reached 69. CBP predicts that this trend will continue and surpass last year’s record of 98 encounters.
The numbers are particularly concerning given that between FY17 and FY20, only eight individuals were apprehended at the border who were on the terror watchlist. In 2021, the number increased to 15.
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Summit.news reports: When border the Southern and Northern borders are taken into account, FY23 has seen 214 people in the Terrorist Screening Database stopped by CBP agents to date. Last year, the total was 380, yet the year before that there were only 157 encounters.
The Department of Homeland Security says the border is secure and claims that the biggest terror threat the U.S. faces is ‘domestic extremists’ radicalised by “false narratives propagated on online platforms.”
The latest data shows that on the whole, CBP apprehended 128,877 people who crossed the border illegally in January and another 128,913 in February.
Those figures are down from December when a record amount of illegal crossings were recorded, as 251,487 illegal immigrants crossed, marking the highest monthly total in history. A total of 17 individuals on the terrorism watchlist were apprehended.
Last week, during testimony before the House, Border Patrol chief Raúl Ortiz contradicted Biden administration officials by stating that there is a full on crisis on the southern border, urging that it is not secure, and calling for a wall to be built.
Ortiz noted that there have already been approximately 385,000 known gotaways at the border since fiscal year 2023 began on Oct 1. That is in addition to 600,000 in FY’22, and 390,000 in FY’21. There have been approximately 1.4 million gotaways since start of FY’21.
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