A new report said thousands of illegal immigrants who could be potential national security risks have crossed into America in the past 10 months.
Between the start of the federal fiscal year in October and the end of August, 74,904 of what are called “special interest aliens” entered the country, according to Customs and Border Protection data cited by the Daily Caller.
The figure is sky-high compared to the 2021 fiscal year total of 3,675 and also up from the 25,627 illegal immigrants in the “special interest aliens” category encountered in the 2022 fiscal year.
Illegal immigrants in the “special interest aliens” category come from places where they might “possibly have a nexus to terrorism” or frequently travel to places where concerning activity takes place. This makes them a rung on the threat ladder below those flagged on a terror watch list who are believed to have engaged in terrorist-related activities.
For example, Uzbekistan is a nation on the list, leading the FBI to hunt for about a dozen illegal immigrants brought in by what is believed to be a smuggler linked to the Islamic State.
A representative of the FBI said it “has not identified a specific terrorism plot associated with foreign nationals who recently entered the United States at the southern border,” according to NBC.
Former acting Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Mark Morgan said releasing illegal immigrants who are “special interest aliens” poses a security risk, the Daily Caller reported.
“So why is it so important to track them down? Because they’re freaking special interest aliens that were smuggled in by somebody with connections to terrorism,” Morgan said.
“Come on, guys. Follow the bouncing ball. I mean, the reason it’s so important is twofold. One, they actually were connected to someone who is connected to a terrorist organization and [two], they’re special interest aliens,” Morgan said.
The number of individuals on the terror watch list trying to enter the county has also risen, hitting 149 so far this fiscal year, up from 98 in the 2022 fiscal year and 16 in the 2021 fiscal year.
“When you have an open border, you don’t get to control who or what enters your home,” former Border Patrol Chief Rodney Scott said last year after numbers spiked, according to the Daily Caller.
“There are significant real threats coming across the border,” he said.
“Unfortunately, all the current administration wants to focus on as an economic migrants and trying to say that they have a kinder, gentler migration policy, but they’re putting the entire Nation at Risk, as well as the millions of migrants that are handed to the cartels to be trafficked across the border,” Scott said.
Scott said most “special interest aliens” go straight into the U.S. after being processed.
“Unless when they run the record checks on that individual person flagged for some type of derogatory information, they’re going to be processed just like any other illegal alien,” he said.
“It basically means that they’re going to be processed, set up for a hearing in the future and released into the United States. We overly rely on the United States to have by current and valid information people that are global database, and that does not exist,” he said.
“Anybody that doesn’t think that serious threats to this country are sneaking in right now is naïve,” Scott said.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
