Sen. Marco Rubio asked the Biden administration to explain how it will secure the U.S.-Mexico border in the event that terrorists released by the Taliban from prisons in Afghanistan attempt to sneak in.
The Florida Republican asked Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Tuesday to provide a full accounting of the steps taken by the department over the past week to shore up the southern border, where thousands of federal agents have been pulled from the field to care for a soaring number of migrant families in custody.
“The current alarming and unsustainable crisis in Afghanistan also gives me significant concerns about the increased risk of dangerous individuals crossing from Mexico into the United States due to your track record of failing to secure our southern border,” Rubio wrote in a letter.
Rubio, the vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and a senior member of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, cited reports that the Taliban have released al Qaeda and Islamic State fighters from prison. He added that people on the terrorist watchlist had already been apprehended at the southern border this year as justification for his concerns.
BORDER PATROL HIRING AGENT TO ‘ADDRESS GAPS IN DIVERSITY,’ MEMO REVEALS
The Florida senator gave Mayorkas until Aug. 31 to explain how the department has boosted border security in the past week to ensure that terrorists released by the Taliban cannot cross the border. He also asked for a written classified report detailing the total number of terrorists the Border Patrol has arrested over the past four months.
Rubio’s remarks come days after the outgoing head of the Border Patrol, Rodney Scott, told agents that they were apprehending people on the terrorist watchlist “at a level we have never seen before.”
“You are not immigration police and our job is not immigration on the border,” Scott said in a farewell message to agents. “Our job is to know who and what comes in this country and then to filter it out based on the rules applied by Congress and by law. That’s critically important, and when you put it in the context of immigration only, I think you miss the bigger fight. This job is extremely important. Your mission’s very important.”
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Customs and Border Protection, the parent agency of the Border Patrol, would not share information about terrorism-affiliated encounters.
