According to a chilling report from the House Judiciary Committee released Monday, at least 99 illegal aliens on the FBI terror watchlist were released into the United States after being arrested by Border Patrol at the southern border, and another 34 aliens on the list are currently in Department of Homeland Security (DHS) custody.
This information was reported to the committee by DHS.
Those actions were taken under policies administered by the Biden-Harris administration and are likely to add heat to the debate over border security in November’s elections. GOP U.S. Senate candidate Dave McCormick has already called out his opponent, three-term incumbent Sen. Bob Casey.
“Bob Casey and Kamala Harris should be putting terrorists behind bars, not releasing them into our communities,” McCormick posted on X in response to the findings.
According to the Judiciary Committee report, the Biden administration “allowed millions of illegal aliens to enter the United States, including [from] terrorist organizations and other bad actors looking to harm Americans. In three and a half years, the Biden-Harris administration has released more than 5.4 million illegal aliens into the United States, with an additional at least 1.9 million known ‘gotaways’ escaping into the country.”
Among those are 250 people on the terrorist watchlist who Border Patrol encountered on the southern border between 2021 and 2023. The report said the Department of Homeland Security released at least 99 of them, with some 34 others in DHS custody.
The illegal aliens in question came from at least 36 different countries, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Kyrgyzstan, Mauritania, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, Tajikistan, Turkey, Uzbekistan, and Yemen.
During the fiscal year 2024, Border Patrol encountered thousands of illegal immigrants from countries that “could present national security risks,” including 2,134 Afghan nationals, 33,347 Chinese citizens, 541 Iranians, 530 Syrians, and 3,104 Uzbek nationals, the report said.
Of eight Tajik nationals released despite potential ISIS ties that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested in June 2024, three had been released into the country using the Biden-Harris administration’s CBP One phone application to schedule an appointment at a port of entry. Four were encountered by Border Patrol while crossing the border without scheduling an appointment.
One of the eight Tajiki men was arrested in Philadelphia.
Polls show Americans are very concerned about the impact of illegal immigration, which set multiple records during the time Vice President Harris was tasked by Biden to address “root causes” of migration from Mexico and the Northern Triangle countries of Central America (El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras).
While Harris allies reject the label “border czar,” illegal crossings from these four countries were 140 percent higher than during the Trump presidency.
Critics of the Biden administration hold the president and his team responsible for the violent crimes committed against lawful American residents by those who cross the border illegally. They point to cases like Rachel Morin, the Maryland mother of five who was beaten, raped, and strangled to death, allegedly by an illegal alien from El Salvador earlier this year.
Todd Bensman of the Center for Immigration Studies argues that “all crimes committed by illegal aliens represent an unnecessary and preventable burden on American society and its criminal justice system.
“To state what should be obvious: Illegal aliens blocked at the border or who are quickly removed from the country cannot inflict harm on Americans because they are not present. That means every single crime committed by an illegally present immigrant was preventable and should never have happened.
The committee report, presented by the GOP majority, claims the Biden administration downplays the possibility of terrorist threats. It also calls out Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for his management of the illegal immigrant issue.
“There is a more than 3,000 percent increase of watchlisted alien encounters compared to all four years of the Trump administration,” the report said. “With the border in chaos under the Biden-Harris administration, the terrorist threat to the homeland has skyrocketed.”
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