Fact check GOP claims that people on the terrorist watch list “chase” the border

Fact check GOP claims that people on the terrorist watch list “chase” the border

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Among the most notable demands made was comments from GOP House leader Kevin McCarthy, who said people on the terror watch list were now trying to enter the US through the southern border.

“They are now finding people from Yemen, Iran, Turkey. People on the terror watch list they are catching. And they are chasing everything at once,” McCarthy told Fox News. He suggested during a news conference that individuals recently detained on the terror watch list also come from Sri Lanka and China.

Rep. John Katko, who was also part of the Republican group that visited the border, confirmed McCarthy’s claim to Fox News. Tuesday morningand said the U.S. Border Patrol had told him they had encountered migrants on the terror watch list.

“I was stunned,” Katko said. “And I’ve never heard of it.”

Facts first: There is no evidence of a sudden rush of individuals on the terrorist watch list appearing on the southern border. The information available is vague and leaves many questions unanswered. It has been said that it is completely false to indicate that a small number of individuals on the terrorist observation list to the southern border is a new phenomenon. Furthermore, it is noteworthy that this does not mean that anyone on the FBI’s terror watch list is a terrorist or that he has ties to terrorists.

This is what we know:

On Tuesday, CNN’s requests to McCarthy’s office for evidence supporting his claims were denied for hours. Then around 2:30 p.m., Axios reported that CBP, according to an unnamed congressional assistant, confirmed to Congress on Tuesday that “four people arrested since October 1 at the southern border correspond to the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Database.”

After the Axios report was published, a representative of McCarthy’s office pointed it out in response to CNN’s request for comment. According to the report, one of the individuals was from Serbia and the other three from Yemen.

On Tuesday night, in response to the report on Axios, Arizona Democrat Representative Ruben Gallego disputed the content of the allegations in an interview with Erin Burnett, CNN, saying, “There is no connection between what I read and what Mr. McCarthy and other people talk about it. ‘

“I actually had an information session on this issue just 90 minutes ago and none of what I heard in the briefing matches this information,” Gallego told CNN.

When Homeland Security Minister Alejandro Mayorkas was asked about the report during a congressional hearing on Wednesday, Mayorkas said individuals on the terrorist watchdog encountered at the southern border ‘are not a new phenomenon’ and that it has been for years takes place.

The report on Axios does not explain when these four individuals were arrested, but says the arrests took place at some point during the five and a half months between October and March 16. Fox News reported Tuesday that one of the individuals was encountered on Jan. 28. “It is also unclear whether the individuals were on the list and whether their names only match the names among the hundreds of thousands stored in the database. And it is currently unknown whether the four people are still in custody or have been released.

Following repeated requests to clear McCarthy’s claim, Customs and Border Protection CNN issued a statement on Tuesday night noting that “encounters with known and suspected terrorists at our borders are very unusual.”

The watchlist

In a frequently asked question, the FBI says that anyone they suspect may be ‘involved in terrorist activities’ may be on the terror watch list. A DHS official told CNN “one should not immediately conclude” why someone is on the waiting list.
Most individuals marked by the watchlist attempt to enter the United States by plane. The encounter with a very small number on the border that is on the terror waiting list is not unique to the Biden government.
Persons on the terror watch list were encountered by federal agents during the presidency of President Donald Trump on the U.S. southern border. Furthermore, the number of people found at the border in a given year is very small and it is a very small percentage of the total known or suspected terrorists who annually attempt to enter or travel to the USA.
In January 2019, CNN reported that from October 2017 to October 2018, approximately a dozen non-US citizens who were on the terror watch list were encountered by federal officers on the U.S. southern border, according to an administration official familiar with CBP -data.

Alex Nowrasteh, director of immigration studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, told CNN that the number of undocumented immigrants on the terrorist frontier at the southern border has been ‘in the low numbers’ most years.

“The numbers are so small that it’s hard to say anything statistically significant about them,” Nowrasteh said, noting that not a single American was killed by an illegal immigrant in a terrorist attack on American soil – it still has does not happen. ”

Previous allegations

Republican allegations that terrorists are crossing the U.S. southern border are not new.

Amid a wave of migration in January 2019, Trump claimed ‘we have terrorists coming through the southern border because they find it probably the easiest place to get through. They drive in right and they turn left. ‘

But the then president’s claims that terrorists are coming through Mexico are contradicted by his own state department.

A report by the State Department’s Bureau of Counter-Terrorism found that ‘(i) n 2019 there was no credible evidence to suggest that international terrorist groups established bases in Mexico, cooperated directly with Mexican drug cartels, or sent them via Mexico to the United States. do not have.’

CNN’s Geneva Sands contributed to this article.

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