Three Palestinians and a Turkish national with suspected ties to terrorist organizations were caught attempting to cross the U.S. southern border this week. The potential national security threat the four individuals posed was only discovered because the illegal immigrants provided their real names to border agents.
At least one of the suspected terrorists had menacing photos on their mobile phone, including one image of a masked man holding an AK-47. Several months ago, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) issued a security memo for the San Deigo border region warning that individuals “inspired by, or reacting to, the current Israel-Hamas conflict may attempt travel to or from the area of hostilities in the Middle East via circuitous transit across the Southwest border.”
Since the Biden-Harris government’s border crisis began over three years ago, government officials—including Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) director Christopher Wray—have warned that the unchecked flow of illegal immigrants poses a national security threat. “There is a particular network that, where some of the overseas facilitators of the smuggling network have ISIS ties that we’re very concerned about,” Wray warned Members of Congress in March.
The latest incident is, concerningly, just the latest encounter border agents have had with possible foreign threats. In early June, eight Tajikistan nationals with ties to Islamic State (ISIS) were arrested in several major U.S. cities after sneaking into the country through the porous southern border. At least one of the Tajik terror suspects was inadvertently released into the U.S. by the Biden-Harris government after initially being detained attempting to illegally enter the country.
In total, upwards of 400 individuals with potential ties to ISIS and other terrorist groups are believed to be at large in the United States.
