The National Security Council's John Kirby brushed aside questions about the threat of foreign terrorists taking advantage of Biden's border crisis to enter the U.S. to carry out or support a potential attack, even as the FBI warns of an increasingly dangerous threat environment.
Noting FBI Director Christopher Wray's testimony earlier on Tuesday in which he warned that the FBI has not been tracking terrorists who may be active in the United States and therefore can't promise an ability to prevent attacks on the homeland, as Townhall reported, Fox News Channel's Peter Doocy asked whether the White House has considered the risk foreign terrorists had illegally entered the U.S. via its southwest border with Mexico.
"We are always concerned about the potential presence on U.S. soil of terrorists coming from overseas, that's something we're always worried about," Kirby answered, largely dismissing the question.
Doocy didn't let Kirby off the hook, however, reminding him of the CBP San Diego Field Office's recent bulletin — covered by Townhall at the time — that warned "individuals inspired by, or reacting to, the current Israel-Hamas conflict may attempt to travel to or from the area of hostilities in the Middle East via circuitous transit across the Southwest border."
With "600,000 known 'got-aways' just in the last fiscal year, is there any heartburn about leaving the border in such a condition that one of those 600,000 could be a terrorist?" Doocy pressed.
Again, Kirby refused to talk about the CBP threat bulletin and tried explaining that the Biden administration is "constantly monitoring, as best we can, all ports of entry to the country, for the potential arrival of anybody who might wish us harm." But in that answer, Kirby perhaps accidentally gave the plot away.
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Ports of entry are the places where border agents screen and allow legal migrants into the United States. But illegal immigrants — as has been documented over and over again — are more likely to illegally cross into the United States at generally unguarded places between those ports of entry. Many of the 600,000 known "got-aways" were counted only because they were spotted via surveillance cameras, drones, air patrols, or border agents unable to apprehend the illegal immigrants. But what Kirby said didn't cover those individuals illegally entering the U.S. between ports of entry.
"If the general gist of your question is, 'are we taking the potential threat seriously?' of course we are," Kirby claimed. The full exchange is embedded below.
John Kirby claims the administration is "always concerned" about terrorists illegally crossing the border.
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) October 31, 2023
More individuals on the terror watchlist illegally entered the country in FY2023 than the past six years combined. pic.twitter.com/ojoKsRASpm
Since Biden took office, there have been more than two million total known "got-aways," as Katie pointed out in a recent Tipsheet that only makes the White House's lack of concern for the threat of terrorism arising from Biden's border crisis — especially because they've been repeatedly warned about terrorists looking to exploit his open-border policies:
The more than seven million illegal immigrants who have entered the country and 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:
The FBI is investigating more than a dozen migrants from Uzbekistan and other countries allowed into the US after they sought asylum at the southern border with Mexico earlier this year, a scramble set off when US intelligence officials found that the migrants traveled with the help of a smuggler with ties to ISIS, according to multiple US officials.
The episode was so alarming that an urgent classified intelligence report was circulated to President Joe Biden’s top Cabinet officials in their morning briefing book. For some counterterrorism officials, it shows that the US is deeply vulnerable to the possibility that terrorists could sneak across the southern border by hiding amid the surge of migrants entering the country in search of asylum.
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