More than 30,000 immigrants who may have been involved in terrorism or other “nefarious activities” have been released into the United States in the past 15 months, according to data obtained by authorities. Daily Caller News Foundation.
Customs and Border Protection data reviewed by the news organization revealed that Border Patrol agents recorded 20,287 encounters with aliens of special interest in fiscal year 2023 and an additional 12,114 encounters through fiscal year 2024. .
Department of Homeland Security Dictionary terms and definitions described an SIA as “a foreign national from a country (as determined by the individual component) identified as having possible or established ties to terrorism.”
2019 Archives web page According to the DHS website, immigrants can be classified as SIAs who are “known or assessed to have possible links to terrorism” “based on analysis of their travel patterns.” It is explained that there is.
“This does not mean that all SIAs are ‘terrorists’, but rather that the travel and actions of such individuals indicate a possible link to heinous activities (including terrorism). “At a minimum, this provides an indicator that enhanced testing and further investigation are warranted,” DHS said.
According to the agency, “SIAs are not simply people who have ‘traveled from countries where acts of terrorism’ have occurred,” but rather people who have “obtained false documents or used smugglers to evade security across multiple countries.” “People”. Additionally, some SIAs have been “involved in criminal activity that may pose a danger to the United States and, after additional investigative work and analysis by CBP personnel, have been determined to have links to terrorism.”
More than 30,000 SIAs admitted to U.S. soil in the past 15 months were given future court dates, according to internal CBP data obtained by DCNF. The data also found that the number of SIA encounters at the southern border increased by 600% from fiscal year 2021 to fiscal year 2022.
DCNF reported that data showed that the majority of SIA encountered in FY2023 were from Turkey, Russia, Afghanistan, and Somalia. So far, the main nationalities of his SIA in 2024 include Turkey, Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Russia.
In fiscal year 2023, 169 people on the FBI’s terrorist watch list attempted to cross the southern border, according to the FBI. CBP report.
DHS officials said the increase in SIA encounters is alarming.
“It worries me, it makes me depressed, it makes me angry and it frustrates me,” the official told DCNF.
DHS did not respond to a request for comment, according to a DCNF report.
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