Alarming numbers were reported by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) as the federal agency revealed that 81 individuals on the terror watchlist have been apprehended while trying to illegally cross into the United States since October 2023.
The CBP data has shown that with six months left in Fiscal Year 2024, encounters with those whose names appear in the Terrorist Screening Dataset are set to be near the 172 reported the previous fiscal year, reported the Post Millennial.
Of those apprehended, 80 of the encounters with border patrol agents occurred at the southern border, while just one suspect attempted to enter the US from Canada, according to CBP.
While the astonishing number of apprehensions is alarming, what is more concerning is the unknown number of individuals who successfully entered the country undetected.
Furthermore, there are concerns that radicalized individuals are allowed to enter the U.S. through border checkpoints because we have no intelligence background on them.
“They’re coming because they believe they’ll be able to get here easier and they can stay,” Sen Marco Rubio told Fox News. “As far as the terrorists are concerned, they’re coming from parts of the world that we have no data on, so if you’re ‘Joe Terrorist’ and you come to the border, we may not know you’re a terrorist because we don’t have any data on you.”
Rubio warned that terror groups may send radical foot soldiers to the U.S. since they know “Biden’s open border will be easy to penetrate.”
“He opened the door to America for ISIS and all these other criminal and terrorist element groups,” the senator noted, “and it’s put our country in grave danger.”
