President Biden's Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas released an updated National Terrorism Advisory System (NTAS) Bulletin on Wednesday in which DHS focused on "lone offenders and small groups motivated by a range of ideological beliefs and personal grievances continue to pose a persistent and lethal threat to the Homeland" as the main reasons the United States "remains in a heightened threat environment."
According to the updated bulletin which will remain in effect from May 24 until November 24, 2023:
Both domestic violent extremists (DVEs) and those associated with foreign terrorist organizations continue to attempt to motivate supporters to conduct attacks in the Homeland, including through violent extremist messaging and online calls for violence. In the coming months, factors that could mobilize individuals to commit violence include their perceptions of the 2024 general election cycle and legislative or judicial decisions pertaining to sociopolitical issues. Likely targets of potential violence include US critical infrastructure, faith-based institutions, individuals or events associated with the LGBTQIA+ community, schools, racial and ethnic minorities, and government facilities and personnel, including law enforcement.
The DHS bulletin also enumerates recent violent acts in the United States, including the Nashville school shooting where a transgender assailant targeted students at a Christian school, but there's one situation that is noticeably absent from Mayorkas' evaluation of threats facing the U.S. homeland: the border crisis.
Specifically, there's no mention of...
- "border"
- "Mexico"
- "migrant"
- "immigrant"
- "alien"
- "illegal"
...anywhere in the bulletin. The absence of a mention of threats posed by both the border crisis and those illegally crossing into the United States is notable, given the sharp increase in the number of illegal immigrants encountered by border agents who match identities in the U.S. Terrorist Screening Database (TSDB).
As Townhall reported last week, House lawmakers sent a letter to Mayorkas noting that DHS' own data showed that "the number of aliens with derogatory information in the TSDB has risen rapidly in recent years."
"So far in Fiscal Year 2023, U.S. Border Patrol (USBP) has already encountered 96 individuals with derogatory information in the TSDB, in addition to the 98 individuals encountered in Fiscal Year 2022, and 15 encountered in Fiscal Year 2021," the lawmakers' letter explains. For comparison, FY 2020 saw three such individuals, zero in FY 2019, six in FY 2018, and two in FY 2017.
The reported number of encountered individuals flagging in the terrorist database, even worse, does not count any of those among the record number of "known got-aways" detected by border agencies but not apprehended. In FY 2022, there were more than 600,000 such "got-aways," and an impossible-to-know number of other unknown "got-aways" who illegally entered the U.S. undetected.
Somehow, the proven efforts of individuals on terror watch lists to enter the U.S. homeland illegally is not concerning enough for the Secretary of Homeland Security to note them among threats to America. Not even with 600,000 individuals with unknown identities who illegally entered the United States unscreened in the previous fiscal year. And not even with an unsecured border that continues to allow an unknown number of unknown individuals to illegally cross into the United States.