Open Border — for Terror
How many terrorists has the Biden administration let slip over our border? Nobody knows. On Tuesday, GOP lawmakers demanded Homeland Security chief Alejandro Mayorkas explain why a known Somalian terrorist, “a confirmed member of al Shabaab,” roamed free in the US for nearly a year.
Border Patrol picked up the man, 27, in California in March 2023, but screwed up the terror-watchlist screening and let him go; after the feds clocked their mistake, Immigration and Customs Enforcement nabbed him in January in Minnesota.
But the “what ifs” are chilling. Just last month, Basel Bassel Ebbadian, an illegal migrant from Lebanon who admitted to Border Patrol agents he was Hezbollah and would “try to make a bomb” in the United States; had he been more discreet, he might’ve gotten released, as most illegal migrants are.
Border Patrol has recorded 70 encounters with migrants on the terror watchlist since last October; in the 12 prior months, 172.
And the smarter terrorists can pay the cartels to help them cross in a spot where they likely won’t get stopped at all: “gotaways” are running over 800,000 a year.
FBI chief Christopher Wray last month warned of “a threat stream that we’re very concerned about”: a “smuggling network” with “ISIS ties” exploiting the open-border policy to sneak people into the country.
Last week, the NYPD busted a group of Venezuelan migrant squatters in The Bronx, finding drugs, ammo and firearms, including a “ghost gun,” in their basement hideout.
If a criminal gang can get that far, a highend terrorist cell can surely get in place to pull off an attack at least as awful as the recent Moscow slaughter.
President Biden’s decision to open the border would be a betrayal of his oath of office even if every “asylum seeker” got screened before being waved in. But he’s let the Border Patrol get so overwhelmed by the tide that the only ones controlling the southern US border are Mexico’s cartels.
Sure seems the question is not if the ticking time bomb will go off, but when.