A new report on the security flaws at the U.S. border confirms President Trump’s claims that terrorists from mostly Middle East criminal networks have hidden among migrants entering the country illegally.
There have been at least 15 confirmed cases of terrorists from groups like ISIS and the Taliban trying to enter the nation, and at least 100 total migrants from nations that harbor terrorist groups have crossed the border since 2001, the year of the 9/11 attacks, according to the report from the Center for Immigration Studies.
“While President Trump may have raised the prospect of terrorist border infiltration to gain political advantage, facts would support his contention that Middle Easterners from places like Syria, Iraq, and Egypt, as well as from South Asia and the Horn of Africa, do indeed routinely travel the same routes as Hondurans to the U.S. southern border and that some terrorist suspects have traveled among them,” the new analysis said.
Because of tight security and classification, the report noted that many more terrorists may have entered or been caught, but the government hasn’t revealed those cases. The 15 are from public records and court documents. In one famous case, a Somali who crossed over the Mexico border went on to Canada and stabbed a police officer and rammed others while carrying an ISIS flag last year.
And, significantly, many others heading to the United States have been seized by U.S. allies in Central America.
In one case noted by CIS, Panama deported six Pakistani nationals it arrested in August 2016. The report’s author, Todd Bensman, the Center’s Texas-based senior national security fellow, wrote, “For Panama to deport any of the roughly 8,000 migrants a year normally allowed to pass through its territory from Colombia northward is highly unusual. The deportations suggest that unusual derogatory information was associated with the six Pakistanis, probably related to terrorism.”
The report is timely considering the caravan of thousands of migrants trying to storm through the U.S.-Mexico border. Trump has pledged to stop all who don’t enter legally.
He is also seeking $5 billion to build a border wall, some $1.6 billion already approved. Talks in Congress are ongoing.
The CIS report lists details of the 15 terrorism cases and said those captured represented al-Shabbab, al-Ittihad al-Islamiya, Hezbollah, the Pakistani Taliban, ISIS, Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami Bangladesh, and the Tamil Tigers.
