America's Talking - 659 Known, Suspected Terrorists Captured in Fiscal 2023, Most in Recorded History

Episode Date: October 15, 2023

More known or suspected terrorists have been apprehended at the northern and southwest borders in fiscal 2023 than any other fiscal year in recorded history. In fiscal 2023, 659 known or suspected terrorists (KSTs) were apprehended attempting to illegally enter the U.S. – with the majority being apprehended at the northern border, according to CBP data last updated Sept. 15. The fiscal year ended Sept. 30. Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/america-in-focus/support Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Greetings and welcome to America and Focus Powered by the Center Square. I'm Dan McAulb, executive editor of the Center Square Newswire Service. Joining me today is the Center Square's Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief Casey Harper. How are you, Casey? Doing good, Dan. How are you? I am doing fine. Thank you. We are recording this on Friday, October 13th. Casey is, the world holds its collective breath as Israel prepares a ground invasion in Gaza, a very tumultuous region of the country. There's concerns back home, too, about what could happen here. Since President Joe Biden has taken office, there have been more than 8 million border encounters since he changed U.S. immigration policy. That number includes well over a million what are called Godaways,

folks who evade capture or apprehension at the border, get into the country, unbeknownst, to federal agents. And the Border Patrol recently released the number of suspected and known terrorists who have been apprehended. These are the ones, these are not the Gadaways, these are been apprehended. And it's at least 659 just in fiscal 2023 alone. But that does not include Gadaways, the folks we don't know. We don't know how many of those are known or suspected terrorists. Law enforcement and across the country, including sheriff's groups, are raising an alarm of what about what that could mean, and essentially are saying, you know, we need to do something and close these borders. We don't know who's in the country because of all of these godaways.

And again, as war erupts in the Middle East, the leader of Hamas terrorist organization yesterday called for jihad in the United States, you know, against Americans and against Jewish folks, because we don't know who's in the country, who's illegally entered the country, Is there a cause for concern here? You know, it's hard to say. I mean, I think the federal intelligence apparatus in the U.S. has tried to downplay this to say this is more, you know, conjecture than real hard data evidence. But, you know, that doesn't do much to assuage people's fear when we see what's happening in the Middle East when Israeli intelligence reportedly had no idea that this attack from home office was coming. And, of course, our own intelligence in the U.S. has been caught on the back heels before.

And so, you know, you got to take all that with a grain of salt. I mean, I think it's perfectly reasonable to have an extra eye out right now when you have such a brazen attack from these Hamas terrorists in Israel, which is, you know, I think it's easy for people to write off the Middle East a little bit. But Israel is a very developed country. It's like very wealthy. There's a lot of very strong military defense, security there. And yet this, they were able to get by. Of course, the border between Gaza and Israel is very, very, very strong. strongly guarded. So this was not, this was a pretty sophisticated operation, I guess is what I'm

trying to say. So the idea that something like that could happen here, of course, it's something to consider, especially when, as you referenced, and we can get into more, the federal data shows that there are hundreds of terrorists, or hundreds of people on the terrorist watch list coming into the U.S. every year. Then those are just the ones we know about. You referenced that Godaways number. So there's millions of Godaways. people who, you know, maybe an agent just kind of sees them and isn't able to catch them. And who knows how many suspected or actual terrorists are in that group. And of course, we know from 9-11, it only takes a handful.

You don't need an army to do a lot of devastation or wreak, a lot of havoc in the U.S. It can be just a handful of well-planned terrorists can do a lot of damage in the U.S. Yeah, members of the American Sheriff Alliance met recently, essentially issued a warning, calling for immediate action. because of what they're saying are these heightened terrorist threats against the U.S. homeland, they put out a statement alliance members discussed, quote, the continued pressure and strain on resources due to the lack of border enforcement throughout the United States, including the alarming statistics of encounters with individuals found to be on the terrorist watch list, also known as the terrorist screening data set.

The alliance notes the apprehensions of known and suspected terrorists. And remember, this is not just, you know, folks from Mexico and Central America and South America. I'm trying to enter the U.S. illegally since Biden's to take an office. There are people from 150 nations across like a world who have been apprehended, including some of these Middle East countries, including from China, including from Russia. And then we both referenced the Godaway numbers, the folks who enter between ports of entry. You know, Border Patrol has drones and other various surveillance. We might not have agents right there on hand to capture these folks, but we have video of them

entering the country illegally, getting past any kind of security. And it's a free-for-all for that. We don't know who they are. We don't know where they're from. We do know, as we just cited, nearly 600 known or suspected terrorists apprehended. But we don't know how many of those are, how many others are known or suspected terrorists could be among that gotaway group. And with the situation in the Middle East now, I don't know. I think we need to do something about our border policies.

Yeah, I think, you know, there's a growing bipartisan consensus that would agree with you on that, Dan. And that's why so many governors have reached out to Biden, Democratic governors, and said, hey, you need to do something. He did restart building some of the border wall. But this is like, this is a longstanding problem. There's already, you know, probably hundreds of these kinds of terrorists in the U.S. and we can't really go back and take them out. Of course, we hardly deport anyone. Now, and, you know, setting the terrorist issue aside, there is also just straight up regular rank and file criminal, the criminal question. And, you know, I found this stat to be really interesting. In fiscal year 2022, ICE agents found 46,000, about 46,000 non-citizens with criminal histories, including about 200,000 with assault charges, over 8,000 with sexual assault offenses, over 5.5,000 with weapons offenses, over 1,500, homicides. related and well over a thousand kidnapping. So like you said, there's a lot of systemic issues of the border. I am a little heartened to see that there's some bipartisan agreement that there needs to be some bigger changes done there. But we'll see. Well, thank you as always for your insight into these very important stories, Casey, but we are out of time. Listeners can keep up with all of our news at the center swear.com for Casey Harper. I'm Dan McAulip. Please subscribe. Thank you for listening.