Customs and Border Protection confirmed it removed a press release about the arrests of two Yemeni men crossing the border who were on the government’s terror watch list from its website, a deletion that Republicans said was a failure of transparency by the Biden administration.
The “news release in question was not properly reviewed and contained certain disclosure and policy information related to national security that required CBP to remove it from our website,” a CBP spokesman told the Washington Examiner.
CBP posted the news release on its website Monday. It stated that in two separate encounters in January and March, Border Patrol agents apprehended men from Yemen who were listed on the FBI’s Terrorism Screening Center’s list as known or suspected terrorists.
A 33-year-old man was arrested on Jan. 29 after attempting to enter the United States illegally from Mexico near Calexico, California. Agents discovered a phone SIM card hidden beneath the sole inside one of his shoes. A 26-year-old man from Yemen was arrested on March 30 in the same area of southeastern California.
VIRAL VIDEOS SHOW TRUMP SUPPORTERS BLOCKED FROM FLIGHTS, BUT THEY WERE NOT ON NO-FLY LIST
The releases were taken down hours after being posted. Republicans from the House Homeland Security Committee called the move into question on Twitter, alleging that the two men had been “exploiting President Biden’s open border policies.”
Two other known or suspected terrorists have been apprehended at the southern border since the start of fiscal year 2021, which began on Oct. 1, 2020. The four matches in the first six months of fiscal year 2021 represent a greater number than the average total seen in recent years, although, historically, border agents arrest several terror suspects annually. Several thousand people are denied entry to the U.S. at airports each year as a result of being on the list.
House Republicans visiting the border in El Paso, Texas, on March 15 first said they had been told by U.S. border authorities that people on the terror watchlist “are now starting to exploit the southern border” as a result of the Biden administration’s lax immigration policies.
The development comes in the midst of surging migration to the southern border, where tens of thousands of families and children without parents are arriving each month. All non-Mexican children are being taken into custody and released into the U.S., and most families in February were released into the interior of the country.
The surge of migrants from mostly Central American countries has prompted Border Patrol to pull some of its 20,000 agents from remote areas to help transport, process, and care for people in custody, meaning fewer agents can patrol for threats such as drug smuggling and criminals attempting to get into the U.S. Oftentimes, smugglers send over large groups of families and children to divert agents to one area then run other contraband or people with criminal records across the border where agents are not present.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Border Patrol arrested people from more than 150 countries in fiscal year 2019 who attempted to cross the border into the U.S illegally.
