America's Talking - House Judiciary Report: Biden-Harris Admin Releasing Known, Suspected Terrorists Into US

Episode Date: August 10, 2024

Biden-Harris administration policies are resulting in Border Patrol agents releasing known or suspected terrorists (KSTs) into the U.S., a new congressional report states. “The open-borders policies of President Joe Biden and border czar Vice President Kamala Harris have allowed millions of illegal aliens to enter the United States, including terrorist organizations and other bad actors looking to harm Americans,” creating a national security threat, the U.S. House Judiciary Committee and its Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security, and Enforcement said in a new interim report released Monday. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Greetings, everyone and welcome to American Focus, powered by the Center Square. I'm Cole McNeely, vice president of audio and video at Franklin News Foundation, publisher of the Center Square Newswire Service. A new congressional report this week states that Biden-Harris administration's policies are resulting in border patrol agents releasing known or suspected terrorists into the United States. Join me to discuss this is the chief content officer at Franklin News Foundation, Dan McAilb. Dan, this is an alarming report, or within a alarm. I'll put it that way. What is the basis of what this report is saying? What is the report and what's really trying to get across here? Let me start with this. The U.S. House Judiciary Committee,

of course, the U.S. House Republicans have a slight majority in the House. The Judiciary Committee and some other House committees have been investigating the border crisis for another, for a couple of years now, as the Center Square has reported, more than 12 million foreign nationals have been apprehended illegally trying to enter the country, and that does not include a stat that's known as Godaways. Godaways are those foreign nationals who illegally cross the border between ports of entry are detected, whether it's by drone or some other video footage, by eyesight, by border patrol agents, but they aren't apprehended because there isn't enough border patrol agents on the border who successfully make their way into the U.S. and then disappear

somewhere into the country. And so the House Judiciary Committee released a report this week about the number of known or suspected terrorists who are known or who have been apprehended at the southern border. And it's based on their report coming. Certainly it's a, it's a Republican-based report. It's, it's alarming. The Center Square has been reporting for a couple years now on this phenomenon, whatever you want to call it.

But what's most alarming about this is the number of known or suspected terrorists who are part of that gotaway data, the ones that we don't know about, who have successfully made it into the U.S. unapprehended. And that's what this report was meant to highlight, is that, hey, we've apprehended, border patrol agents have apprehended hundreds of people who were on the international terrorist watch list,

some of whom they've released into the country because there wasn't proper vetting procedures in place. But then there's also these unknowns, These more than 2 million unknowns who have successfully entered the country were not the stop by Border Patrol agents made in the country. What percentage of those could possibly be known or suspected terrorists? And then what happens next? And, Dan, something somewhat interesting here. I mean, this report only seems to focus on those crossings at the southern border.

But historically, this has been a northern border issue, which I don't think a lot of people would think of. Yeah, there's so much attention paid. to the southern border in regards to the border crisis, because that's where the floods of people are coming. And we know through the Center Square reporting, too, we're just not talking about Mexican foreign nationals or Honduran foreign nationals or Venezuela, central American foreign nationals. Foreign nationals have been apprehended from more than 150 different countries across the world. because of the volume of numbers at the southern border, you're right. That's where most of the attention is paid. But as the Center Square has reported over the past two years, the number of known or suspected terrorists who have apprehended trying to get into the country, actually significantly more of them have been apprehended trying to cross the northern border from Canada into the U.S. And that's a data point. And I'm surprised that the U.S. House Judiciary committee in its report ignored the number of known or suspected terrorists that have come through

the Northern border because they don't reference that data at all. They only reference the data of known or suspected terrorists from the Southern Board. So it's even more alarming, or it should be more alarming than what the House Judiciary Committee report reflects. And Dan, you mentioned, I mean, that these people are coming from, I mean, all over the place. When you look at the numbers, I mean, these aren't small numbers, Chinese nationals, Iranian nationals, Syrian nationals, and many other places. You know, one of the things, obviously, as you mentioned, it is a Republican report. We are in an election year. We can't ignore that.

And I imagine that's why the southern border conversation is what they focused on. But as I mentioned in the kind of intro there, the report actually points to certain policies and claim that those policies are the ones that are resulting in these, you know, agents releasing these known or suspected terrorists into the United States. So what are the policies that are in place that this report points to being the, I guess, the issue here? Well, there are several, several different policy changes that once President Biden took office in January 2021, that he implemented on day one. And then over the course of his, you know, first three or his three and a half years in office,

additional policies were added. The first few that come to mind is on day one, he ended former President Donald Trump's remain in Mexico policy. What that policy was, was that people who try to get into the United States claim asylum at ports of entry, at valid legitimate ports of entry, President Trump's policy was, you remain in Mexico until your asylum claim is prosecuted. and that, honestly, that can be a couple year-long process.

The Biden administration on day one ended that policy. You could enter the U.S. at a port of entry, file an asylum claim, and you were allowed to enter the country, enter the country, and you'd be given a court date at some point in the future. This wasn't on day one, but this sense, these future court dates that many of these foreign national are getting, are four years in the future. Now, can you imagine you enter the country, you make an asylum claim, whether it's legitimate or not, you disappear under the country. You're supposed to expect it to show up at court four years from now. These folks aren't going to show up four years from now. So that was policy number one. Of course, one of President

Trump's, when he ran for office back in 2015, 2016, he promised to build a borderable. You got to I think it was 400 miles of border wall built during his term in office, President Biden halted that on day one. And then, of course, during the transition from former President Trump to President Biden, we're still in the COVID-19 pandemic, President Trump also had a policy in place to prevent the spread of COVID in America. No one was going to be allowed into the country. who didn't have a proper visa or was an American citizen who is coming back from traveling to Mexico.

So those are three of the some of the policies that started on day one of Biden's administration. Since then, the Biden administration has adopted other policies, including creating what's called a CBP for Customs and Border Protection, CBP1 app. And what that does is it allows foreign nationals all over Central America, South America, et cetera, to apply on this app for an asylum claim, schedule an appointment, and then you're led into the country. You still get a court date, but again, it's years in the future now until that court date. So you're living freely in the United States. And the final part of this, so many, I mentioned the 12 million figure earlier today.

there have been so many migrants who have crossed the border into the United States that federal agencies can't keep up. And the vetting process of these agencies has suffered because of it. When someone attempts to come into the U.S., whether it's an asylum claim, whether it's between a port of entry, trying to cross the Rio Grande, undetected, those kinds of things, if you're apprehended, you're supposed to go through a thorough vetting process before you're released into the U.S. And we know now that that hasn't been happening because after the fact, even foreign nationals who have been apprehended by Border Patrol, stopped at the border, supposedly gone through a vetting process, released into the United States, after the fact we've known that there have been arrests of some of those people are on the terror watch list. international terror watch list. So it's trouble. Dan, I'm going to ask you to speculate a little bit here, but one of the, I think, cabinet members, if not the cabinet member that has been under

the most scrutiny in the Biden administration is DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Do you foresee this report reopening, I'm going to say that, scab of sort? Two ways to answer that. Yes, Republicans and President Trump, they're going to be hammering away on Secretary Mayorkas of the Department of Homeland Security and, of course, of Biden. And quote-unquote, borders are Kamala Harris. Biden named Kamala Harris, who's now Trump's opponent in November, the borders are back in 2021. So there's no doubt during the election year that Republicans are going to continue to hammer away on this issue.

And even people with an own Biden's administration, FBI director Christopher Ray, comes to mind, he is warned that we are in a, what should be a worrisome state about a potential terrorist attack on U.S. soil. So Republicans will hammer away on it, but Republicans in the House did impeach Secretary Mayorkas back in February. It went nowhere in the U.S. and the Democratic controlled U.S. Senate. In fact, they just dismissed the impeachment charges without even holding a trial, which was unprecedented at the time. Republican since, particularly after the attempted assassination of President Trump at the Butler, Pennsylvania campaign rally last month, restarted their calls for Mayorkas to either be fired or to resign because the Department

of Homeland Security oversees the Secret Service. There were so many issues with the Secret services security plan and execution at that Butler, Pennsylvania event, that there were renewed calls for May orcas to side. But that's really all that is right now is it's rhetoric that's not going to happen. I figure, you know, I'm pretty sure Mayorkas will finish out President Biden's term in office, whether he's brought back. Trump wins the election in November. He certainly will not be brought back. Whether if Harris wins the election, whether she brings him back, that would remain to be seen. Certainly a story that's not going away anytime soon.

You can keep up with this story and more at thecentersquare.com for Dan McAulb. This is Cole McNeely. Please subscribe and thanks for listening.