Over 3,000% Hike in Illegal Aliens on Terror Watchlist, DHS Frees Dozens in U.S., Judges Grant Bail

Under Vice President Kamala Harris’s laughable tenure as the Biden administration’s border czar a record number of illegal immigrants on the terrorist watchlist have entered the United States through the southwest border and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), created after 9/11 to protect the country from another terrorist attack, has released at least 99 into American communities. That is not all. Immigration judges have granted bail to at least 27 illegal aliens on the terrorist watchlist, asylum to at least four and terminated the cases of two known or suspected terrorists, according to startling government figures embedded in a congressional report released this week.

The data, which covers three-and-a-half years of the Biden administration, illustrates that the damage produced by its flagrant open border policies is even worse than previously imagined and the derelict measures have clearly generated serious national security issues. During the Biden-Harris tenure an astounding 5.4 million illegal immigrants have been released into the United States with an additional 2 million known “gotaways” escaping into the country, the report, published by the House Judiciary Committee, reveals. “Among those more than 7.3 million illegal aliens are 375 illegal aliens on the U.S. government’s terrorist watchlist who have been apprehended by Border Patrol under President Biden’s and Vice President Harris’s watch,” the document reads. “That is a more than 3,000 percent increase of watchlisted alien encounters compared to all four years of the Trump Administration.”

The illegal immigrants on the terrorist watchlist encountered by Border Patrol between fiscal years 2021 and 2023 come from 36 different countries, including nations with an active terrorist presence such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Kyrgyzstan, Mauritania, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, Tajikistan, Turkey, Uzbekistan, and Yemen. The probe found that so far in fiscal year 2024, which ends in September, federal agents along the Mexican border have encountered tens of thousands of illegal immigrants from countries that could present national security risks, including 2,134 Afghan nationals, 33,347 Chinese, 541 Iranians, 520 Syrians and 3,104 Uzbeks. Just weeks ago, federal authorities released into the country three of eight Tajik nationals with potential ties to the terrorist group Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) after using the Biden administration’s fraud-infested CBP One phone application to schedule appointments at ports of entry. Four were caught by federal agents while crossing the border and one arrived at a port of entry without scheduling an appointment through the app.

“The crisis at the southwest border caused by the Biden-Harris Administration has raised serious national security risks, with the number of potential terrorists encountered at the southwest border skyrocketing since January 2021,” the report confirms. The document includes recent congressional testimony from FBI Director Christopher Wray acknowledging that untold scores of potential terrorists have also entered the U.S. because they were not on the terrorist watchlist at the time DHS released them into the country. “[T]here has been a lot of focus on the number of known or suspected terrorists encountered at the border,” Wray told lawmakers in July. “And that number has increased over the last five or six years, and that should be of concern. But frankly, to me, the bigger concern is individuals who weren’t, either weren’t on the [terrorist] watchlist at the time they came in because there wasn’t information known yet that ties them to terrorism, and it is only after they get in that some new piece of information develops somewhere overseas and now we know. That is a bigger concern.”

Just this week Judicial Watch reported that one of the Jordanian illegal immigrants released from federal custody after being charged for trying to breach Marine Corps Base Quantico appears on a terror watch list. His name is Hasan Yousef Hamdan, a 32-year-old who crossed into California from Mexico earlier this year and was issued a 2026 deportation court date, according to records obtained by Judicial Watch. Though the government has consistently denied that Hamdan represented a threat or appeared on the terrorist watchlist a Marine Corps Serious Incident Report (SIR) obtained by Judicial Watch via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) says that an ICE officer “telephonically confirmed” to the Marine Criminal Investigations Division (CID) that “Hamdan was on a terror watch list.”