Border Crisis: Encounters With Potential Terrorists On Pace To Shatter Previous Record

Border Patrol nabbed 80 individuals at the southern border whose names appeared on the terror watchlist in just six months, meaning the number of potential terrorists apprehended at the border is on pace to shatter the previous record, according to data released by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Monday.

Terrorist watchlist apprehensions in all of fiscal year 2022 totaled 98, making fiscal year 2023 on pace to hit a new record, according to CBP. The data comes amid an uptick in illegal migration at the southern border, where CBP recorded more than 1 million migrant encounters between October and March.

Border Patrol encountered no individuals on the terror watchlist at the southern border in fiscal year 2019, then three in fiscal year 2020 and 15 in fiscal year 2021, according to the CBP data.

Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz, testified to members of Congress in March that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) lacked “operational control” of the southern border.

“When you have an open border, you don’t get to control who or what enters your home,” former Border Patrol Chief Rodney Scott told the Daily Caller News Foundation in October. “There are significant real threats coming across the border.”

“Anybody that doesn’t think that serious threats to this country are sneaking in right now is naïve,” Scott added.

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