The Biden administration is rushing to fill gaps in intelligence sharing after at least six people on terrorism watch lists entered the U.S. in the past two years.
All of the men, who have ties to U.S.-designated terrorist organizations, including al-Shabaab in Somalia and Islamic State of Afghanistan (HEB), were screened by border patrol officials and allowed into the U.S., only to later discover they were on watch lists.
Under current rules, immigration judges and asylum examiners interview immigrants to determine whether they are eligible to enter the United States. Prohibiting access to certain confidential information The investigation, conducted by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), will help the agency make better decisions about whether immigrants are terrorists or pose a national security threat.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas plans to increase automatic access to information for judges and asylum decision-makers, reversing orders that have been in place since 2004 that have barred them from accessing the information except in certain exceptional circumstances. As first reported by NBC.
But some feel the order comes too late after nearly four years of a border crisis in which more than 7 million people have been apprehended trying to enter the US illegally, according to Customs and Border Protection statistics.
“The administration has now become reactive,” Edwin Peters, a former immigration judge who retired last year, told The Washington Post about the policy change.
Peters said she must take the Department of Homeland Security at its word that it completed “satisfactory” background checks on the cases she presided over during her tenure as an immigration judge.
“Honestly, I don’t know why they blocked us. It’s just been talked about because of a news report and now they’re trying to catch up,” he added.
Peters was referring to the case of Mohammed Kalwin, 48, an Afghan immigrant who entered the United States illegally in March 2023 near San Ysidro, California.
He was arrested by border patrol agents but was processed and released back into the country. Nearly a year later, the FBI notified Immigration and Customs Enforcement that Calwin was a suspected member of the terrorist organization Hizb-e-Islami (HIG).
Kerwin was rearrested in San Antonio, Texas, on February 28, but was briefly released after the Department of Homeland Security failed to notify an immigration judge of his suspected terrorism ties, and was then rearrested on April 11.
Matt O’Brien, a former immigration judge who now works at the Immigration Reform Law Institute, told the Post that the Department of Homeland Security is also supposed to disclose information about possible terrorism ties in court, but appears to have failed to do so in some recent cases.
“I believe what’s happened here is a reflection of this administration’s lax approach to national security, and a desperate ‘clean up’ measure to make it look like they’re closing loopholes that never existed in the first place,” O’Brien said.
Andrew Arthur, a former Immigration and Naturalization Service terrorism prosecutor and researcher at the Center for Immigration Studies, said he believes the Biden administration needs to be on guard against a full-scale terrorist attack, given incidents such as immigrants on watch lists being allowed into the country and the attempt by two illegal immigrants to break into Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia.
“I think the Biden administration is very concerned that there will be a surprise in October and one or more of these individuals will take action,” Arthur told The Post.
“I think the Biden administration is very concerned. I think the administration is finally waking up to the fact that if any of them were to take any action, it would be electoral disaster for the Democratic Party and for Biden. I think that’s a huge political weakness and a huge national security weakness.”
DHS did not respond to The Washington Post’s request for comment.
ICE also confirmed in February that a 27-year-old Somali man, whose name has not been released, was released into the United States by border authorities after illegally crossing into California despite being a “confirmed member of al-Shabaab,” a group designated by the U.S. as a terrorist organization.
The man had been on a terrorism watch list for allegedly being involved in the “use, manufacture or transportation of explosives and firearms” but was released after the Border Patrol got erroneous information. ICE later discovered the error and he was arrested in Minnesota in January.
