OPINION:
America has been routed in central Asia.
The Taliban once again controls Afghanistan, and while many are rightly worried about the larger global strategic effects this foreign policy disaster will have on U.S. interests around the world, my concern today has a narrower and more immediate focus.
Given the Biden administration’s decision months ago to virtually open our southern border to a flood of migrants from all over the world, what is to prevent an influx of Afghanistan-launched terrorists from sneaking across that border and into our country to plot mayhem and commit murder against our fellow citizens?
Does anyone doubt that a revivified al Qaeda, based in Afghanistan as it was two decades ago, harbors ill intent toward the United States, its citizens, its interests, and its allies? Does anyone doubt that Taliban control of Afghanistan could result in al Qaeda once again using that nation as a base of terrorist operations against America?
The Biden administration’s national security team insists that it can continue to protect America against foreign-launched terrorism. Given the Biden Administration’s utter failure to properly execute the American withdrawal from Afghanistan, and President Biden’s horrible speech about that on Monday, I don’t find their assurances regarding our future security to be comforting in the least.
American border agents have recognized that over the last few years, there’s been a change in the composition of those trying to enter America illegally. Now, those crossing the border are no longer simply coming from Mexico or the so-called “Northern Triangle” countries of Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. Now they are coming from all over the world.
Reported The Wall Street Journal just days ago: “Migrants from South America, the Caribbean and as far as Eastern Europe are crossing the U.S.-Mexico border illegally at an unprecedented rate … In the past 10 months, nearly two in 10 arrests at the U.S. border were of a migrant from neither Mexico nor the three ‘Northern Triangle’ countries of Central America – Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador – up from about 9% in the 2019 fiscal year, and from less than 3% in 2014, according to government figures. In July, that number was nearly three in 10.”
In July, American border agents apprehended more than 200,000 illegal immigrants trying to cross our southern border. Nearly three in ten of that would be about 60,000 illegal immigrants who did not come from Mexico or the Northern Triangle countries. That’s an awful lot.
And that’s just among the illegal border-crossers we happen to catch. What about the ones we don’t succeed in apprehending?
In early February, less than two weeks after Biden took over from his predecessor, Border Patrol agents in Yuma, Arizona, apprehended a group of 11 Iranian citizens who illegally crossed the border into the United States.
In March, Axios reported that the Customs and Border Protection agency told members of Congress that since the start of the fiscal year on October 1, 2020, four individuals apprehended at the southern border matched names on the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Database. Three were from Yemen and one was from Serbia.
Liberals, of course, deny that any terrorists are crossing the southern border, despite the evidence to the contrary.
Responded Arizona Democrat Congressman Ruben Gallego to a mid-March statement from House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy to the effect that Border Patrol agents had just told McCarthy about apprehending suspected terrorists on the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Database: “Weird as the Chairman of the subcommittee on Intelligence and Special Operations and a border state member of Congress haven’t heard anything about this. Gonna ask for a briefing. Pretty sure he is either wrong or lying.”
As the Axios report – issued one day after Mr. Gallego’s ill-timed tweet – makes clear, Mr. McCarthy was neither wrong nor lying.
The fact is, there are already suspected terrorists coming across our southern border. And while I’m pleased that the agents of Customs and Border Protection appear to be doing a good job apprehending and handling these potentially dangerous illegal immigrants, I’m also more than a bit concerned about those who got away. After all, it only takes one.
What makes matters worse, of course, is that the crisis on our southern border – and it is a crisis, no matter how loudly Biden Administration spokesmen deny it – had reached crisis proportions long before our failure in Afghanistan. Our border agents were being overwhelmed months ago before they had to worry about a new influx of potential terrorists from Afghanistan. Now that Taliban control of Afghanistan has to be factored into the equation, the security threat posed by our inability to control our southern border is going to multiply exponentially.
Is the Biden Administration ready for that? America’s security depends on it.
• Jenny Beth Martin is the co-founder and national coordinator of the Tea Party Patriots.
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