The Biden administration has revealed, in a just-published report, that last year, the CBP encountered and then released an illegal migrant in Arizona on the FBI’s Terrorist Watchlist. The illegal was eventually tracked down in Florida weeks later after a series of missteps by the government.
The migrant, whose name and sex are still being withheld to ensure the “privacy of the migrant and their family,” was initially apprehended in Yuma, Arizona, on April 17, 2022. “They” were screened for national security threats and found to be an “inconclusive” match with the FBI’s Terrorist Watchlist. Requesting further screening, the CBP sent an email to the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Center (TSC). Unfortunately, the officials used the wrong email address, and the request went nowhere.
Apparently deciding that no news is good news, the CPB released the migrant a couple of days later, on April 19, after outfitting him with an ankle bracelet. On April 21, the TSA encountered the migrant and his family checking into a flight from Palm Springs, California, to Tampa, Florida. Further screening at that point confirmed that the individual was indeed on the Watchlist, but he and his family were nevertheless allowed to board. The next day, April 22, an ICE officer contacted the ICE field office in Miami and requested the subject be arrested–but not until their Alternatives to Detention hearing, which was scheduled for June 1.
ICE moved the arrest date up, for three reasons, one of which was “The migrant could pose a national security risk,” which would seem to most people to be sufficient. (The other two reasons are redacted from the report.) At about 5:30 am on May 6, after days of trying unsuccessfully to find out who had the GPS data from the subject’s ankle bracelet, ICE Fugitive Operations agents staked out the address where the migrant was apparently living and eventually arrested him in a traffic stop two hours later. At that point, the report ceases to detail the subject’s whereabouts. (Chances are, “they’re” gone again.)
This entire slipshod affair took 19 days during which a host of alphabet-soup federal agencies ineptly followed the suspected terrorist through three states, apprehending and then releasing him every step of the way. It was filled with goof-ups, bad decisions, and communication lapses throughout and allowed the subject nearly three weeks to travel more or less at will wherever he chose in the country.
Commenting on the snafu, former CBP Acting Commissioner Mark Morgan said the incident was an embarrassment for U.S. counterterrorism officials, but then he added that, after all, the job of the CBP these days “is not to secure the border [but] to process and release illegal aliens as fast as possible.” Noting that the Biden administration has released approximately 1.7 illegal aliens into the U.S., he concluded with:
[W]e know they’ve encountered an unprecedented number, hundreds of illegal aliens that are on the terrorist screening database. Think about how many potential, would-be illegal aliens that could serve as a potential national security threat are among the 1.7 million. We literally could have the next terrorist sleeper cell in United States planning the next terrorist attack, and we would have no idea.
Just so.
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