Republican Senators allege southern border open to infiltration by terrorists

In the latest letter to United States Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, a group of Republican Senators pressed for plans to secure the U.S.-Mexico border, claiming that it is beyond U.S. operational control and open for terrorist infiltration.

Despite the fact that no deadly terrorist attacks on U.S. soil have resulted from anyone who illegally crossed the Southern border, U.S. Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Joni Ernst (R-IA), Ted Cruz (R-TX), Thom Tillis (R-NC) and Marco Rubio (R-FL) all signed onto this latest letter, urging greater security following the recent assassination of al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in Afghanistan. They noted that in the past nine months, at least 56 individuals who were on the Terrorist Screening Database were apprehended by Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) agents.

In turn, they hooked these figures to thousands said to have evaded Border Patrol — claiming that with those numbers among the successfully caught, there must be more among those who got away. Further, they concluded that because terrorist groups have gained footholds in Central and South America, they have an opportunity to enter the U.S. through Mexico, though no evidence of this occurring has yet to be found.

“We have been sounding the alarm for several years about how our broken border is a ripe opportunity for terrorists to enter the homeland,” the senators wrote. “With all due respect, Mr. Secretary, our border is not secure. We have lost complete operational control of the southern border, and it serves as a calling card for terrorists everywhere.”

Afghanistan has been a wake-up call for terrorists in their view, and with the Taliban takeover and American withdrawal from the country, such groups are operating more openly within its borders. The assassination of Zawahiri by the U.S. could act as a sort of lightning rod for such groups, by their logic, and the border could represent a penetration point for an organized terrorist attack or exploitation by transnational criminal organizations.

They called for a report on how Homeland Security intends to secure the border, while deriding Biden administration policies and lamenting what they called a virtual invasion by immigrants. According to a Homeland Security report released earlier this year, though, most attempting illegal immigration are apprehended.

“Overall, both available measures of the apprehension rate indicate that USBP apprehends the majority of intending border crossers, and that the apprehension rate has substantially increased over the last decade,” the Department of Homeland Security Border Security Metrics Report: 2021, wrote. “The model-based apprehension rate went from 42 percent in 2000 and a low point of 33 percent in 2003 to a high of 72 percent in 2019 before falling to 60 percent in 2020.”

Nevertheless, the Senators noted that the Border Patrol union and others have issued concerns about how resources are being used at the border and have pressed for change.

“The most devastating event would be an organized terrorist attack, originating from Afghanistan, against our homeland via our southern border,” the Senators said. “We are tremendously exposed, as the unrelenting surge of illegal immigration on our southern border is tying up resources and taking our eye off the ball when it comes to terrorism, drugs, and crime.”