House Judiciary Committee Exposes Release of 99 Terrorist Aliens

FAIR Take | August 2024

Last week, the House Judiciary Committee released a searing report detailing the record number of suspected terrorists flooding across the border under the Biden-Harris Administration. The Committee found that gross mismanagement of border security and interior enforcement has led to serious national security risks, including dozens of aliens on the FBI’s terrorist watchlist and other aliens from potentially hostile nations, being released into the United States.

Most notably, the report reveals that at least 99 aliens on the terrorist watchlist have been released into the country under the current administration. Another 34 are in Department of Homeland Security (DHS) custody but have not been removed.

The release of dozens of aliens on the terror watchlist is no doubt the result of the chaos created by open-borders policies and the open invitation those policies send to hostile actors. In just over three years, Border Patrol has encountered a record 380 aliens on the FBI’s terrorist watchlist attempting to enter the country illegally, a nearly 3,000 percent increase. In addition, this year alone (FY 2024), Border Patrol agents have encountered tens of thousands of aliens from dangerous or hostile areas around the world, including “2,134 Afghan nationals, 33,347 Chinese nationals, 541 Iranian nationals, 520 Syrian nationals, and 3,104 Uzbek nationals.” In fact, over the past three years (FY21-23), Border Patrol has encountered aliens from 36 different countries on the watchlist, “including places with active terrorist presence such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Kyrgyzstan, Mauritania, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, Tajikistan, Turkey, Uzbekistan, and Yemen.”

Intelligence officials and Border Patrol agents have voiced concern about the potential for foreign terrorists to slip through the border, especially as encounters skyrocket. Former Border Patrol Chief Rodney Scott told the Committee in September 2023 that “[c]rimes committed by a foreign national outside the U.S. rarely appear in [U.S.] databases.” Moreover, if the United States does not have diplomatic relations with the alien’s home country, or the home country does not maintain reliable records, it can be difficult or impossible to obtain the records at all. As a result, Chief Scott stated that aliens at the border are basically “vetted against a blank sheet of paper.” FBI Director Christopher Wray underscored this point in July when he told Congress that one of the FBI’s biggest concerns is the arrival of aliens who aren’t on the terrorist watchlist when they entered “because there wasn’t information known yet that ties them to terrorism.”

In just one egregious example of failed vetting, eight illegal aliens from Tajikistan with ties to ISIS were released into the country. The Tajik nationals were screened by Customs and Border Protection (CBP), but when derogatory information did not immediately surface, they were released rather than being detained. When details of their ties to terrorism were uncovered later, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested all eight nationals in June 2024 in New York City, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia – nearly a year after some of them had entered. According to the Committee’s report, “three [of the Tajik nationals] were released into the country after using the Biden-Harris-Administration’s CBP One phone application to schedule an appointment at a port of entry, four were initially encountered by Border Patrol while crossing the border, and one arrived at a port of entry without scheduling a CBP One app appointment.” Since FY2021, more than 1,500 Tajik nationals have been encountered at the border, a stark contrast from just 26 such encounters over the previous 14 years.

Not only is the government unable to properly vet these aliens, failures in information sharing and interior enforcement also allow these aliens to remain in the country undetected. The report draws attention to a critical example with the story of Mohammad Kharwin, an Afghani national who was released into the United States despite clear ties to an anti-Western insurgent group, Hezb-e-Islami. After crossing the border illegally and initially being placed into Alternatives to Detention (ATD) in March 2023, Kharwin was inexplicably removed from the program and remained at large until the FBI became aware of him in February 2024. Following his apprehension, an immigration judge, who was not informed of Kharwin’s ties to terrorism, released him on bond. Only after that error came to light was Kharwin apprehended again in April 2024. He is now in detention until his removal hearing.

Unfortunately, according to the report, Kharwin is only one of numerous critical, and often unwitting, mistakes made by immigration judges under the Biden-Harris Administration. The nation’s Chief Immigration Judge told the Committee that roughly 95 percent of immigration judges do not have access to classified information and that there are likely “gaps in the information that DHS shares with immigration judges about whether an illegal alien should be detained due to being a danger to the community or a flight risk.” Because of these communication failures, between FY2021 and FY2023, immigration judges granted bond to 27 aliens on the terrorist watchlist, granted asylum to at least four, and terminated the cases of at least two.

Many Members of Congress argued that this report demonstrates a clear failure of open-borders policies. Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) stated that, “The Biden-Harris Administration’s complete disregard for border security has welcomed terrorists into our country. Americans are not safe in Biden-Harris’ America.” Congressman August Pfluger (R-Texas) similarly emphasized that threats to our national security are at an all-time high, and pointed out that “[i]t took less than 20 terrorists to plot the attacks on 9/11 that killed thousands of innocent Americans.” Despite repeated concerns, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has maintained that “individuals who pose a threat to national security and public safety are detained.”

Through three years of open-borders policies, the Biden-Harris Administration has prioritized the interests of illegal aliens while ignoring the public safety and national security risks that are the result of those policies. Without concerted efforts and real policy reforms to ensure that illegal aliens cannot continue to take advantage of our unsecure borders, American communities will continue to be put at risk.