James Varney of realclearinvestigations.com has posted a scary article this Halloween about the growing threat of terrorists entering this country across our porous borders.
Pointing out that in the first three years of the Biden regime, a record 6.5 million-plus illegal migrants have been encountered by border authorities after crossing those borders. The most recent monthly figure — for September — showed another record number of monthly encounters, 269,735.
How many were either terrorists or would-be terrorists we do not know. (Just as we don’t know how many were admitted into our country despite their having illegally entered it.)
What we do know is not reassuring. In all, when considering entries by land, sea, and air in Fiscal Year 2023, a total of 736 persons on the FBI’s Terror Screening Dataset (the watchlist) entered the U.S. By comparison, between FY 2017 and 2019, Border Patrol agents apprehended a total of only 11 such people. Something is surely afoot.
But it gets worse. Those on the watchlist are known. What of the unknowns? Most especially, what about the vast numbers who successfully get over the border without being “encountered,” that is, the “got-aways”?
The CBP, using a combination of techniques ranging from surveillance videos from blimps, drones, and satellites, to the counting of footprints on the ground, regularly releases its guess of the got-away numbers. So far during the Biden administration, that guess stands at 1.7 million, almost assuredly a low number. Mark Morgan, former commissioner of the CBP, says the absolute minimum is the official guess plus 20 percent, bringing the real number close to two million. Since got-aways are typically individuals who take extra precautions to get away un-encountered, it is an open question just why those two million needed to do so. Again, the prospects are not reassuring. With large numbers of Hamas fighters looking for a way out of Gaza, it is a certainty that many will find their way to Joe Biden’s make-believe border. Morgan concluded:
It’s beyond a real concern now. What happened in Israel should tell you two things: that global terrorism is alive and well and that there can still be massive intelligence failure. So, if you asked the intelligence community right now how many of the 1.7 million plus gotaways might be a terrorist threat the honest answer is “we don’t know.” If you ask if there could be a sleeper cell the honest answer would have to be “we don’t know.”
Happy Halloween.
For more, see Real Clear Investigations.