Border Patrol agents caught 16 people on the FBI’s terror watch list trying to illegally cross the U.S. southwest land border between entry ports in April, bringing this fiscal year’s suspected terrorist arrest total up to nearly 100.
Not only is 16 higher than the recorded combined arrest totals from fiscal years 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020 but it’s the same as the total number of suspected terrorists apprehended at the southern border in FY 2021. Data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection also suggests that the number of suspected terrorists arrested in April alone was five times the three watch list apprehensions listed for all of FY 2019 and FY 2020.
There are still five months left in the 2023 fiscal year, which means that 2022’s arrest total of 98 people on the watch list, an all-time record for the U.S., will be easily surpassed in the coming months. Already, CBP data says 98 noncitizen watch list members were arrested at American borders in 2023, all but two of whom were caught at the southern border. Reports of more potentially dangerous foreign nationals trying to infiltrate the U.S. in May have also surfaced.
Ever since Biden took office in January 2021, border arrests have skyrocketed. The number of suspected terrorists captured by border agents may be small compared to the 1,734,686 and 2,378,944 illegal border crossers apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border in FY 2021 and FY 2022, respectively, but it is important.
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