'National Security Risk': New Data on Illegal Immigrants From Middle East Is Alarming

The crisis unfolding along the U.S.-Mexico border is nothing new at this point, but — as Katie reported earlier this week — the Hamas terrorist invasion of Israel from the Gaza Strip highlighted the national security ramifications of border security, specifically the lack of critical information the United States government has about the individuals illegally entering our country.

"Since President Joe Biden took office in January 2021, more than two million individuals have entered the country as 'gotaways,'" Katie reminded. "The more than seven million illegal immigrants who have entered the country and been processed by Border Patrol have not been vetted. We know nearly 400 individuals on the terrorist watch list have been apprehended attempting to enter and the FBI is currently looking for potential members of an ISIS terrorist ring that was smuggled into the country," her report emphasized.

On Tuesday, Fox News Channel's Bill Melugin reported new internal data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection on "special interest aliens," defined by the Department of Homeland Security as "a non-U.S. person who, based on an analysis of travel patterns, potentially poses a national security risk to the United States or its interests" who are often "employing travel patterns known or evaluated to possibly have a nexus to terrorism." That is, SIAs are the kind of illegal immigrants the U.S. should be especially aware of and strict toward.

Yet, according to the data reported by Melugin, there have been tens of thousands of such individuals apprehended by border agents since 2021 — and an unknown number of other people who would be considered SIAs but who are among the millions of known and unknown "gotaways" who unlawfully entered the U.S. without being apprehended or noticed at all.

According to Biden administration data on countries of origin confirmed by CBP, here's how many SIAs were apprehended — and where they were from — between October 2021 and October 2023:

As Melugin emphasized, his Border Patrol sources said they have "extreme concerns about who is coming into the country because they have little to no way of vetting people from these special interest countries." If an apprehended SIA hasn't previously committed a crime inside the U.S. and isn't already flagged on a terror watch list, "there’s no way to know who they are because most of their home countries don’t share data/records with the US." That is, according to Melugin and his sources, "there is nothing to match a name to when BP agents run fingerprints."

NEW: Internal CBP data provided & confirmed by CBP sources reveals thousands of “special interest aliens” from mostly Middle Eastern countries have been apprehended by Border Patrol while crossing into U.S. illegally over last 2 years.

Syria: 538
Yemen: 139
Iran: 659
Iraq: 123…
— Bill Melugin (@BillMelugin_) October 10, 2023