Terrorism and the southern border

With immigration a top issue for Republican voters in this election, the House Subcommittee on Border Security and Enforcement called a hearing on Thursday morning to investigate whether terrorists are taking advantage of the security crisis at the southern border.

Witnesses said the threat—although it hasn’t materialized meaningfully in the past—is a concern for law enforcement. The hearing highlighted steep partisan divides on the matter of border security, but some lawmakers leaving the hearing said they hoped it would result in an actionable path forward.

“The hearing was an informational hearing,” Rep. Lou Correa, D-Calif., the subcommittee’s ranking member, said when asked about his take-away. “Both sides had their points of view. What I think that hearing did was get some of us to think about ideas of how we can work together.”

Correa said Republicans and Democrats were negotiating on new legislation to propose in the coming week to address the issue. He did not identify the specific bills he was referring to.

Republicans on Capitol Hill started formally raising alarms about terrorists crossing the southern border when the Department of Homeland Security Office of Intelligence and Analysis released its forward-looking Homeland Threat Assessment for 2024.

The report concluded that officials at the southern border had arrested 169 suspects who matched the identity of a person on the terrorist watch list—up from 89 such identified persons in 2022 and just 15 in 2021. The list, also known as the Terrorist Screening Database, shares unclassified information about persons of interest to the public and is managed by the Terrorist Screening Center, a multiagency effort spearheaded by the FBI.

Republicans, led by former President Donald Trump, have warned that the numbers of known terrorists entering the country could continue to rise unless the government does more to identify and deter threats.

Rep. Clay Higgins, R-La., chairman of the Subcommittee on Border Security, placed the blame of such a possibility with the current administration: “The Biden-Harris administration continues to make it easy for unvetted, illegal immigrants to cross our border, to live and work in the United States, across every community and every sovereign state. How many more terrorists or suspected terrorists are most likely living in your community?”

Timothy Healy, the former director of the screening center, told lawmakers on Thursday he believes that the problem could get worse given the sheer volume of people entering the country through the southern border. But more than that, Healy pointed to a recent change in the kinds of people attempting to enter the country.

“In 2021 the demographics of those crossing the border began to shift. The number of young men traveling alone around the world dramatically increased,” Healy said.

Healy noted that between the start of 2021 and July 2024, over 10 million “got-aways” made it into the United States, referring to the number of known crossers tracked by the Customs and Border Protections who were not apprehended by border security.

“These unprecedented numbers have shattered all expectations, pushing our country’s screening capabilities to the breaking point, exposing vulnerabilities at a scale once unimagined,” Healy said.

Democrats at the hearing called Republican messaging on the issue alarmist and unhelpful. One witness, Alex Nowrasteh, vice president of economic and social policy studies at the Cato Institute, agreed.

Nowrasteh said that only nine known terrorists who attempted to carry out an attack have entered the country—all of whom were arrested before they could put their plots into action. Five of them crossed the U.S.-Canada border. One was a stowaway on a ship. The other three, the Duka brothers, entered illegally across the U.S.-Mexico border as children in 1984.

He said Republican fears of widespread terrorist presence were overblown. He argued immigrants drawn to the United States come largely in hopes of economic opportunity.

Even when evaluating terror activity committed by all immigrants regardless of their legal status, Nowrasteh testified the number remains extremely low.

“Foreign-born terrorists have murdered 3,046 people in attacks on U.S. soil since 1975—equivalent to 0.3 percent of all homicides during that time. That includes, of course, the 9/11 attacks,” Nowrasteh said. That being said, Nowrasteh admitted the picture at the southern border carries great potential for risk.

Correa said the problem at the border is complex and requires progressive thinking. He doesn’t dismiss the idea that there’s a lot of work to do on the southern border.

“How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time,” Correa said. “The [discussed] ideas are more on all of the above: screening is one, root causes, other areas we will be working on through legislation.”