America's Talking - FBI Director: Smuggling Organizations Connected to ISIS Coming Through Us Border

Episode Date: March 16, 2024

FBI Director Christopher Wray on Monday confirmed that a smuggling organization working with the terrorist organization ISIS is funneling criminals through the U.S. border. He also said the FBI is currently investigating its operations that “we’re very concerned about.” In a U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence hearing held on Monday on worldwide threats to the United States, U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Florida, asked Wray about threats coming through the U.S. border. “Over the last three years, millions of people crossed the U.S. border illegally and many have been released into the country,” Rubio said, asking first about “people with ties to dangerous gangs.” 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.

Hello and welcome to America in Focus, powered by the Center Square. I'm Dan McAelope, chief content officer at the Franklin News Foundation, publisher of the Center Square Newswire Service. We are recording this on Friday, March 15th. FBI director Christopher Way testified before Congress this week about known worldwide threats to the United States, and during questioning, he revealed a stunning bit of information. The terrorist organization, ISIS, also known as the Islamic state of Iraq and Syria, has been working with cartels. to funnel criminals through the southern U.S. border. Joining me today to discuss this is Casey Harper, the Center Square of Washington, D.C.

Bureau chief. Casey, what are your takeaways from the FBI director's testimony? Yeah, I mean, the testimony was very concerning, very much going back and watching. You can read about it at thecenter square.com. You can watch a video of it online, but it just was confirmation from a top official who sees all the data and the briefings behind the scenes. And it was one of the most concerned I've ever, times I've concerned I've seen him be, especially in front of Congress. There was not a lot of dismissing concerns or rolling eyes, as we've seen other Biden administration officials do when it comes to the border.

More and more people are taking this issue seriously. The ISIS connection, of course, is very alarming and worth pointing out. But I would just say that what makes the ISIS issue unique is that Americans recognize the name of that group, and it holds a certain place in the American imagination as a very dangerous group. And of course, that's true. But there's plenty of other groups that are just as dangerous. And actually, I would say possibly more dangerous because of their proximity to the U.S. that are not as well known, but are doing just as much and probably more coming across the border. So ISIS is the most famous group, but there are plenty of other groups like it, some which are, you know, kind of have a flavor of Islamic extremism and many of which do not,

that are infiltrating the border, that are smuggling people across. You know, Ray also said in his testimony that they've stopped enough fentanyl coming across the southern border to kill basically the entire population of the U.S. Because fentanyl is such a lethal drug, even in small doses. So this is a really serious issue. There's multiple angles to it, the smuggling, the fentanyl. and ISIS is a very vivid picture, but they're just one of several groups that are similarly just as dangerous. Yeah, I think when many people think of, you know, the, now it's more than 11 million people who have tried to enter the country illegally since Biden took office.

You know, you think of citizens of Mexico, citizens of other Central American countries, Guatemala, et cetera, South American countries such as Venezuela. But the fact is, border patrol agents have apprehended citizens from more than 150 countries across the world. And that includes China. That includes Iraq. That includes a lot of these, you know, essentially sworn enemies of the United States in the Middle East. And so when you hear that ISIS is working with these cartels to smuggle people over, you have to wonder who these people are that are coming into the country. We know that there's been more than a thousand known or suspected terrorists, folks who are on the international terror watch list who have been apprehended coming into the country. What we don't know is those who have successfully entered the country undetected. So this latest bit of information that ISIS is actively working to smuggle people into the country, that's got to be concerning for everybody. Yeah, it is.

It's a very organized operation. I think many people have this idea of a young family. on their own kind of waiting across the Rio Grande, crossing their fingers that they don't get caught. And a percentage would be that, you know, possibly. But it's much more organized than that. It runs through the cartels. People pay money to a coyote who gets them across. To give you an idea of the danger on the level of sophistication, a general testified before Congress this week, who just took over command and is now overseeing part of the border. And he testified before Congress that there are thousands of drones that come into the United States across the border from Mexico.

And he said he doesn't even know how many drones are coming in, but he knows it's in the number of thousands. And he's very concerned about it. He says nobody really knows the number, but it's in the thousands. And so this is not, you know, just struggling families making their way across. It's a lot of single military age men. They all have connections to some kind of, not all, but many, many high percentage have connections or are using the cartels to get across. There's drone operations.

It's kind of unclear what those are doing. I think it'd be fair to say that some could at least be delivering drug parcels, but that may not be everything. They could be doing surveillance and other things. So there's, you know, a lot of money to be made. There's drone surveillance. There's connections to, as you said, 150 countries. There's connections to, you know, radical terrorist groups that have a history of killing

U.S. soldiers. There's Chinese nationals. coming in droves. And of course, China's an adversarial nation and any foreign policy expert will tell you we could be at war with China any day over Taiwan. And so we have these unknown Chinese nationals coming in all the time. So there's just a lot of concerns. Casey, also this week, 26 House Democrats launched a Democrats for Border Security Task Force. It's co-chaired by U.S. Representative Henry Quaylor of Texas, of course, which is Texas is more on the of the illegal immigration in the past several years.

And it's also co-chaired by newly elected U.S. Representative Thomas Swazi of New York. New York City, of course, has seen a significant surge in foreign nationals being bused there from the southern border. You know, we're more than three years into the border crisis and Democrats who have been pushing back against Republican criticism. Of course, Republicans in the House impeached Department of Homeland Security. security secretary, Mayorkas earlier this year because of the border crisis. Anyway, Democrats have largely pushed back against that, but the fact that they're forming a task force now more than three years into the border crisis, what does that say to you? Well, it's really a political move now. We're in an election year. We're a few months out.

The southern border in particular has become a defining issue of this election. I think we're getting to the point where it's too late to change that. And I think Democrats are very worried about it. Republicans perform much stronger on the border. The Republican frontrunner is, you know, the one and only Donald Trump who really made his career talking about the dangers of the borders, the border many years ago and might be seen as being a little bit prophetic at this point because it's only gotten worse. The wall that was once mocked might be sounding more and more appealing to Americans who are concerned about crime, who are concerned about fentanyl coming across. And so this is a political pivot. I think it could be to,

little too late. You know, a couple, it's kind of, you know, Democrats are making a lot of hey about how they're doing this, but they could only get a couple of dozen Democrats to join this group first off, which is really interesting. And the group itself is not proposing anything that would really solve the border crisis. And they did not vote for HR2, which was a, is a Republican bill that would basically do very drastic steps to secure the borders, such as building hundreds of miles of border wall. And so I think from the Republican perspective is you guys are politically posturing saying you are worried about the border. But when it comes down to voting for legislation or pushing President Biden to use executive action to actually do anything substantive,

not, you know, this Senate bill that they think is just kind of a posturing and a messaging bill. When it comes to doing something real, Republicans say Democrats are just not willing to do that. Casey, thank you for joining us today. Listeners can keep up with all news related to the horror crisis and more at the center square.com.