(TheLastPatriotNews.com) – US Border Patrol arrested 127 terrorists among the millions of illegal immigrants who entered the US in the first eight months of the 2023 fiscal year, surpassing the entire previous year.
Thus, the number of illegal immigrants whose names are on the US terror watchlist and who were nabbed between October 1, 2022, and May 31, 2023, is almost 30% higher than the number of terrorists caught at the border in all of FY 2022.
Among the 127 newly caught terror watchlist migrants, 125 were busted at the border with Mexico, while two were captured while entering the US from Canada in the north, The Daily Caller reports.
Newly updated data from US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) shows 27 terrorism suspects were arrested by Border Patrol in April alone – the month that saw the end of Title 42, the Trump-era policy allowing fast expulsion of migrants.
While the 2023 fiscal year has four more months to go, the most staggering spike so far in the number of terrorists caught on the border was registered last fiscal year.
Three terror watchlist individuals were caught among the illegal immigrants in FY 2019, three in FY 2020, 15 in FY 2021, and 98 in FY 2022.
“Encounters of watchlisted individuals at our borders are very uncommon, underscoring the critical work CBP Agents and Officers carry out every day on the frontlines,” CBP’s website says regarding terror watchlist arrests.
“DHS [The Department of Homeland Security] works tirelessly to secure our borders through a combination of highly trained personnel, ground and aerial monitoring systems, and robust intelligence and information sharing networks,” it adds.
Previous reports based on internal CBP data showed that the 2022 fiscal year saw a 600% hike in the number of illegal immigrants deemed of “special interest” by the US authorities due to the risks their countries pose to America’s national security.
In absolute terms, the number of such illegal aliens last fiscal year stood at 25,627.
“Anybody that doesn’t think that serious threats to this country are sneaking in right now is naïve,” former Border Patrol Chief Rodney Scott previously told the news outlet regarding the “special interest” migrant apprehensions.
