Connect with us

illegal immigration

US can stop border-crossing terrorists with – Obama administration policies?

Published

1 year ago

6 minute read

Uzbek “special interest aliens” in Tapachula, Mexico after crossing from Guatemala on their way to the U.S. Southwest Border. January 2022 photo by Todd Bensman

By Todd Bensman as published June 12, 2024 by The New York Post

Near-misses from the worst mass migration border crisis in American history keep coming at us like machine-gun fire.

This month, FBI counterterrorism agents arrested six Tajikistani nationals on terrorism charges after they illegally crossed the southwest border from Mexico, apparently foiling a terror plot linked to the ISIS-K terror group in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The arrests came soon after a Russian who illegally crossed the border was convicted and sentenced in California on terrorism charges for buying weaponry for an al Qaeda group in Syria, as the FBI said he would have gone kinetic had he not been charged.

In May, a Jordanian national who illegally crossed the border from Mexico staged a vehicle ramming attack on Marine Corps Base Quantico that all involved federal agencies refuse to publicly rule out as a terror incident.

This year, Border Patrol agents overrun by the mass migration crisis have accidentally released at least seven immigrants  who were on the FBI’s terrorism watch list when they illegally crossed the southern border, according to multiple reports, sparking frantic manhunts to capture them.

That’s just a fractional few of many disturbing cases.

For years prior to the historic mass migration crisis that President Biden kicked off on his inauguration day in 2021, the US media laughed off the threat of terrorist border infiltration as the stuff of baseless right-wing fear-mongering — such as when then-President Donald Trump said in 2018 that Middle Easterners were moving with US-bound caravans through Central America and Mexico.

Much good company has joined the once-ridiculed Paul Reveres, including FBI Director Christopher Wray and the apparently spooked authors of a surprisingly anxious Foreign Affairs magazine essay published this week.

But while many are sounding border infiltration alarms, few have offered solutions.

Perhaps Republican border hawks should turn to an unexpected ally: Democratic Party stalwart Jeh Johnson, President Barack Obama’s secretary of homeland security.

In 2016, during his final months in office, Johnson became a true believer in the threat posed by “special interest aliens,” or SIAs: border-crossing migrants from 35 to 40 nations where Islamic terrorist groups are active.

After 9/11, one of the most important counterterrorism protocols implemented on the border required agents to detain all SIAs until they could undergo face-to-face interviews to determine if these total strangers harbored potential terror connections or intent.

In June 2016, Johnson was so fearful about SIA border crossers that he sent a memorandum to his top deputies demanding their “immediate attention” to “the increased global movement of SIAs.”

He ordered the formation of a “multi-DHS Component SIA Joint Action Group” that would assess the entire program and create a tightly coordinated international action plan to “counter the threats posed by the smuggling of SIAs.”

“I want to ensure we are bringing the full resources of the Department to bear in a coordinated manner on the issue of SIAs,” he wrote, to build on existing counter-SIA programs.

Johnson’s completely prudent plan to intensify the vetting of SIAs at the border and to take down terrorist smugglers in other countries got lost in the chaos of the transition to Donald Trump’s presidency.

His intended revamp never happened — and the catastrophic Biden-engineered mass migration crisis vaporized whatever was left of it.

While SIA traffic over the border had previously amounted to 3,000 to 4,000 individuals annually, SIA traffic since 2021 has reached an unimaginable 70,000 to 80,000 per year.

Federal intelligence and law enforcement officials could no longer interview even a smidgeon of those SIAs, who are mostly waved into the country with no interviews.

“Due to massive numbers of illegal aliens overwhelming CBP, in-depth face-to-face interviews are nonexistent,” former Chief Border Patrol Agent Rodney Scott testified before the House Judiciary Committee last September on the subject of terrorist border infiltration.

The first fix is, of course, almost too obvious to mention: Reduce the total numbers of illegal aliens pouring over the southwest border.

But the far less obvious fix is this one, regardless of how many are crossing: We must resurrect Johnson’s 2016 initiative to interview SIAs before they are released on asylum, and target their smugglers for prosecution and prison.

As importantly, we must adequately fund and equip this massive effort — no matter how many SIAs arrive.

If Johnson’s 2016 plan was nonpartisan enough for the Obama administration, it should be good enough for the Biden DHS, or a Trump one. And, we can hope, not too late to stop the next terrorism attempt within the United States.

Todd Bensman, a senior national security fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, is the author of “America’s Covert Border War” (2021).

Related Topics:

Todayville is a digital media and technology company. We profile unique stories and events in our community. Register and promote your community event for free.

Follow Author

More from this author
Business / 11 mins ago

Carney praises Trump’s world ‘leadership’ at G7 meeting in Canada

Business / 3 hours ago

Carney’s Honeymoon Phase Enters a ‘Make-or-Break’ Week

Energy / 3 hours ago

Kananaskis G7 meeting the right setting for U.S. and Canada to reassert energy ties

illegal immigration

LA protests continue as judge pulls back CA National Guard ahead of ‘No Kings Day’

Published on June 12, 2025

By

From The Center Square

By

Protests in Los Angeles continued into Thursday night as tensions died down across the West Coast ahead of thousands of anti-Trump demonstrations planned for Saturday — the “No Kings Day” event is set to take place coast-to-coast amid civil unrest nationwide.

The Los Angeles Police Department posted to X as the 8 p.m. curfew went into effect Thursday, reporting that protesters were throwing “bricks, concrete and commercial grade fireworks.” The agency said less lethal munitions have been authorized and “may cause pain and discomfort.

The curfew covers an area where demonstrators have spent days protesting President Donald Trump’s immigration raids and the deployment of the California National Guard. A federal judge blocked his use of the guard late Thursday, but did not rule on the Marines also deployed there.

Gov. Gavin Newsom held a press conference in San Francisco shortly after the ruling, calling out Trump for deploying the guard without his consent. U.S. District Judge Charles R. Breyer’s preliminary injunction takes effect Friday, at which point Newsom will resume control of his National Guard.

“This is what he does. He creates a problem, and then he tries to be a hero in his own Marvel movie. He initiated those raids,” Newsom said of Trump’s actions.  “He significantly increased the scale and scope of those raids. That’s why he wants the National Guard, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of guardsmen and women, now being dispersed everywhere.”

The Trump administration filed an intent to appeal Breyer’s ruling shortly after. In the meantime, the guard will go back to its regular duties on Friday instead of guarding the federal immigration in downtown Los Angeles, only one day before thousands of protests nationwide against Trump.

According to a press release, the LAPD arrested 71 people for failure to disperse Wednesday night into Thursday morning, and intends to post another update Friday morning. Seven others were also arrested for violating the curfew, and two for assaulting an officer with a deadly weapon.

Protesters filmed live streams on YouTube leading up to the curfew, reporting that some people were arrested and that they heard munitions being fired. Some demonstrators encouraged the group to disperse, adding that escalating things may be what the administration is waiting for.

The Los Angeles Department of Transportation posted to social media Thursday evening that it had cut services short for the day in response to the protests. LAPD vehicles were seen lining the streets, with officers ready to issue arrests in the event of further unrest or curfew violations.

In some live streams, officers were seen issuing arrests just 30 minutes after the 8 p.m. curfew, and in some instances, towing away vehicles. Another protest in Salt Lake City, Utah, kicked off at 6 p.m. on Thursday after the Party for Socialism & Liberation called for demonstrations there.

The Salt Lake Police Department told KSL News Radio that the demonstration of roughly 600 people was mostly peaceful, aside from a damaged Tesla. Officers broke up some fights and remained on scene as it died down around 8:30 p.m., Brian Will with KUTV 2 News reported.

This is a developing story.

Continue Reading

Business

Trump: ‘Changes are coming’ to aggressive immigration policy after business complaints

Published on June 12, 2025

By

From The Center Square

By

“So we’re going to have an order on that pretty soon – we can’t do that to our farmers and leisure too, hotels, we’re going to have to use a lot of common sense on that.”

President Donald Trump said Thursday that changes are coming to his aggressive immigration policies after complaints from farmers and business owners.

“Our great Farmers and people in the Hotel and Leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long time workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace,” Trump wrote in a social media post Thursday morning. “In many cases the Criminals allowed into our Country by the VERY Stupid Biden Open Borders Policy are applying for those jobs. This is not good. We must protect our Farmers, but get the CRIMINALS OUT OF THE USA. Changes are coming!”

Later Thursday, Trump made it clear that businesses need workers.

“Our farmers are being hurt badly. They have very good workers – they’re not citizens, but they’ve turned out to be great. And we’re going to have to do something about that,” the president said.

He added: “We can’t take farmers and take all their people and send them back because they don’t have, maybe, what they’re supposed to have.”

Just how Trump may change his approach to immigration enforcement remains unclear, but he said he wants to help farmers and business owners.

“You go into a farm and you look and people, they’ve been there for 20 or 25 years and they work great and the owner of the farm loves them and you’re supposed to throw them out. You know what happens? They end up hiring the criminals that have come in, the murderers from prisons and everything else,” Trump said.

Trump said changes would be coming soon, but gave little detail on how policies could change.

“So we’re going to have an order on that pretty soon – we can’t do that to our farmers and leisure too, hotels, we’re going to have to use a lot of common sense on that.”

In a later post on Truth Social, Trump said illegal immigration had destroyed American institutions.

“Biden let 21 Million Unvetted, Illegal Aliens flood into the Country from some of the most dangerous and dysfunctional Nations on Earth — Many of them Rapists, Murderers, and Terrorists. This tsunami of Illegals has destroyed Americans’ Public Schools, Hospitals, Parks, Community Resources, and Living Conditions,” the president wrote. “They have stolen American Jobs, consumed BILLIONS OF DOLLARS in Free Welfare, and turned once idyllic Communities, like Springfield, Ohio, into Third World Nightmares.”

He added that deportations would continue: “I campaigned on, and received a Historic Mandate for, the largest Mass Deportation Program in American History. Polling shows overwhelming Public Support for getting the Illegals out, and that is exactly what we will do. As Commander-in-Chief, I will always protect and defend the Heroes of ICE and Border Patrol, whose work has already resulted in the Most Secure Border in American History. Anyone who assaults or attacks an ICE or Border Agent will do hard time in jail. Those who are here illegally should either self deport using the CBP Home App or, ICE will find you and remove you. Saving America is not negotiable!”

Continue Reading

Trending

X