(PatrioticPost.com)- According to Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the Border Patrol captured at least 23 persons crossing the southern border whose identities were on the terror watchlist in 2021.
There were 23 interactions with people whose identities matched on the Terrorist Screening Database between January 20 and December 27, 2021. (TSDB).
Four were in the Rio Grande Valley Sector, four in the Del Rio Sector, three in the El Paso Sector, two in Tucson, two in Yuma, four in El Centro, and four in San Diego. The data was released to Fox News in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request in December.
The Terrorist Screening Database (TSDB) is a database that holds information about people who are known or “reasonably suspected” of being involved in terrorist activity. Republicans in Congress have frequently demanded that the government make the number of people apprehended at the border public.
Reporting indicates that multiple individuals with terrorist ties have recently been apprehended after illegally crossing the border. Such encounters may be increasing.
Ranking members of the Oversight and Homeland Security committees, Reps James Comer and John Katko, wrote to DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas last month to raise their concerns.
They said that the American people have a right to know if President Biden’s lax border policies admit terrorists into the country.
Rodney Scott, the former Border Patrol chief, has regularly raised concerns about the quantity of TSDBs crossing the border, telling fellow agents last year that it was at a level we have never seen before.
“We have terrorist threats that we can’t get into in this sort of venue, but they are serious,” said Scott.
Republicans on the committees have also requested information on the number of TSDB-linked migrants in each fiscal year from 2016 to the present and details on their origins.
They’ve also asked for any data that may be used to estimate the number of people who have crossed the border but eluded the Border Patrol.
Almost 62,000 illegal aliens eluded Border Patrol authorities in March, an average of 2,000 each day.
The figures come as the Biden administration is again confronted with record-breaking border crossings taxing personnel and resources. According to a report released last week, CBP inspectors saw more than 212,000 migrants at the border in March, more than any other month last year.
