America's Talking - Border Crisis, ‘Rebuilding’ Terror Groups Pose Threat to U.S.

Episode Date: November 17, 2023

The crisis at the southern border, the growing threat of terrorism, and overseas conflicts that could entangle the U.S. are among the growing threats to national security, U.S. House lawmakers were told at a Wednesday hearing. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, FBI Director Christopher Wray and National Counterterrorism Director Christine Abizaid testified at the hearing about the danger of worldwide threats spilling into the U.S. 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 in Focus, powered by the Center Square. I'm Dan McAulip, Vice President of News and content at Franklin News Foundation, publisher of the Sanis Square Newswire Service. Join me again today is Casey Harbour, the Center Square's Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief. Casey, we've been writing at thecentr Square.com for well over a year, talking about it on American Focus about the ongoing border crisis situation at the border and the potential for domestic terrorism as a result of it. You covered a hearing this week in the U.S. House, U.S. House Homeland Security Committee, where of FBI director Christopher Ray and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas testified about the potential or the national threat in the United States

for terrorism. They didn't know so much talk about the Boer's situation, but with the increased tensions in the Middle East over Israel's war with the terrorist organization Hamas, all the tensions that's, that's created. Tell us about what happened at the hearing. Right. I mean, yeah, it is, it's kind of troubling that at this hearing on, you know, threats to the United States and the homeland, there really didn't have enough time to go in depth on any one topic because there were so many different threats to, that they had to at least touch on. And, of course, the border is top of mind there. You know, we've reported, Bethany Blankley's reported at the cinder's court.com that over 10 million illegal immigrants have come into the U.S. since President Joe Biden took office.

That's more than the population of more than 30 states, right? That is correct, yes. Yeah, I think I want to say it's more than 30 at least. So, I mean, which is pretty incredible. Of course, more in the population of New York City, L.A., Houston, Chicago, all these major cities. And so, you know, and we know that a high, I won't say a high percentage, we know a percentage of those migrants are either violent criminals from the data,

just as not my opinion, this is from the data. And some are even on the terror watch those hundreds, in fact. And so that's raised the question of, okay, are we allowing terrorists into our country? And they also come through. Sorry, Casey. I just want to be more specific there. More than 700 known or suspected terrorists attempted to cross the U.S. border illegally, both the southern border and the northern border.

A lot of the tensions been on the, our attention has been on the southern border. But roughly two-thirds in fiscal 2023 alone, we're just talking. about October 1st, 2022 to September 30th, 2023, just that past fiscal year, more than 700 known or suspected terrorists illegally attempted to enter the U.S. from the southern and the northern borders. So go ahead. Yeah, and those are the ones who we know about, right? So, of course, there are some who are not detected, who do have some terrorist connections that the FBI, the TSC is not aware of.

And then there are, you know, well over a million, I think around two million people who got into the country that never were even processed by federal authorities. You know, we might have, they're called gotaways, right? And I know you know that, but maybe we have them on video coming across, but no one ever actually intercepted and processed them. And so of those, you know, hundreds and hundreds of thousands into the millions of people, you have to assume that at least the same percentage is terrorist-connected or violent criminal, if not more, right? And so that's a really troubling thing. And, you know, that was something that... We don't know who they are. We don't know where they are.

We don't know how many they are. Exactly. No. And that's exactly what people were saying at the hearing. And, you know, I know you're following this, but Marjorie Taylor Green, the Republican from Georgia actually filed a motion to impeach Mayorkas because she's basically called this a dereliction of duty. This is something Republicans were really pushing for.

And it narrowly failed. I think eight House Republicans did not side with her. But, you know, this, that's pretty unusual, Dan, to have a DHS head almost impeached because the border crisis is that bad. Yeah. And so at this hearing, Casey, they, it seemed to me that Ray and Mayorkas focused mostly on the threat that's going on in Israel. The Hamas terrorist snuck into Israel last month, killed, what, more than a thousand Israelis, children, even infants among them, took more than 200 hostages back into Hamas. Of course, Israel responded, has entered Gaza, trying to apprehend or kill Hamas terrorist leaders. And that's just created tensions in Europe, in the United States, around the world.

And Director Ray, a couple of weeks ago, did mention that they have ongoing threats, or they've heard that Hamas might be trying to send Hamas sympathizers, maybe even Hamas soldiers into the U.S. to create disruptions. So the focus was mostly on that. They did, as you mentioned, Marjorie Taylor Green and others are looking to possibly impeach Mayarchus over the ongoing border crisis. But those two are very much related, right? Right. And, you know, I think one, another theme of the hearing was that there is a concern

among Ray in particular that this violence overseas and violence, against Israel and Israel's response could actually radicalize people here in the U.S. You know, and we've seen radicalization happen. The DOJ really tracks this, and they often arrest people who they have monitored through online forums become radicalized and then intercept them before they're able to carry out some kind of attack somewhere written about this in the past. And so radicalization does, is kind of always happening in the U.S. and the DOJ is always fighting it and always kind of working on cases related to that.

And when something like this happens, they're afraid that it's going to lead to more lone wolf kind of terrorist as well. But you're right. I believe it was the San Diego office of DHS sent out a warning that, you know, basically some of these terror groups could be, make an attempt to come up north across the border. And we know that they have relationships with, you know, for instance, the cartels. I mean, Hezbollah has done work with the cartels. And the way that the southern border is overwhelmed right now, it's pretty easy to get people in. There's also able to come across, you know, different waterways at times. And, you know, I spoke with a former DHS official not long ago who explained to me that the cartel actually works strategically with

these migrants. They'll send a flood of just kind of innocent civilian migrants across. And then when the border patrol are busy capturing all these people and taking them back to headquarters to process them, then the cartels will send through their, you know, their, you know, their contraband, their people, their drugs, their equipment, once DHS is overwhelmed. So these two issues work hand in hand. The cartel is very strategic. They have a ton of money. And, of course, they're fueling the fentanyl crisis as well, which has killed tens of thousands of Americans via poisoning just in the last couple years.

Yeah, just brief sidebar, you mentioned that when we think about what's been going on at the border, almost 99% of the attention has been focused on the southern U.S. war. Texas with Mexico, Arizona, with Mexico, New Mexico, and California with Mexico. But as we as, as we also mentioned, it's happening at the northern border. And you broke the story this week about it's also happening along waterway borders. All right. To the U.S. Coast Guard is interdicting more and more people trying to illegally enter the country. So it's really, it's, it's kind of scary, you know, all, all U.S. borders, are being infiltrated during this ongoing border crisis.

Yeah, I mean, yeah, I covered this as a separate hearing about the Coast Guard, but I just noticed this fact that no one is really talking about, which is that the Coast Guard, which often intercepts different kinds of vessels. You know, if a vessel, a raft is coming from Cuba. You know, the Coast Guard is the one who rescues the people when the raft inevitably breaks apart, you know, but it can be more sophisticated than that. We know that the DOJ has prosecuted people for doing more sophisticated shipping of, like, large amounts of, like thousands of kilos of cocaine, for example, to some of the cartels.

So it can be more sophisticated in the Coast Guard deals with that. But the number of basically migrants that the Coast Guard has stopped since 2021 has doubled. So from now, so 2021 is doubled. And so, I mean, that is, you know, of course that is overflow from the crisis at the southern border. But, you know, people can try to downplay it. But when, you mean, when the stats are literally doubling within two years, you know that something really is going on. Casey, we could talk about this all day. There's so much scary data out there regarding this.

Of course, many in the U.S. are on heightened alert for the potential for terrorist acts on the U.S. homeland. But we are out of time. Listeners can keep up with Casey's great reporting, Bentley Blankly, as Casey mentioned earlier, is great reporting on this ongoing border situation at the center square.com. For Casey Harper, I'm Dan McHaleb. Please subscribe. Thank you for listening. Thank you.