U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has encountered 50 individuals on the FBI’s terror watchlist trying to illegally enter the United States so far in fiscal year 2024, which began in October 2023.
According to CBP statistics released on Jan. 26, there were 49 encounters with people who have records in the Terrorist Screening Dataset—also known as the “watchlist”—between ports of entry at the U.S. southern border.
At the U.S. northern border, meanwhile, only one individual on the watchlist was encountered, according to the data.
It comes after a record 172 such encounters were recorded in fiscal year 2023, which exceeded the previous record of 98 in fiscal year 2022, and 16 in fiscal year 2021. Before fiscal year 2021, those with records in the terror watchlist were in the single digits for data going back to 2017.
The federal dataset maintained by the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Center includes the identifying information of known and suspected terrorists and terrorist groups, as well as the information of their affiliates.
“Encounters of watchlisted individuals at our borders are very uncommon, underscoring the critical work CBP Agents and Officers carry out every day on the frontlines,” the CBP website says.
The figure of individuals on the terror watchlist caught at the U.S. border is of concern, as they only represent the ones processed by border officials. Other individuals on the list may have attempted entry and evaded law enforcement, being among the many “gotaways” getting through the porous and underresourced border.
In a statement on Jan. 27, House Republicans criticized the Biden administration’s border policies while pointing to the latest CBP statistics.
“The Biden border crisis has gotten so bad that CBP has had to actually double the size of the chart it uses to report illegal immigrant encounters at the Southern Border from 150,000 to 300,000,” House Republicans said.
The House members were referring to a record-breaking number of illegal immigrants crossing the U.S. border in December 2023, when a stunning 371,036 illegal immigrants were caught trying to enter the country illegally, breaking the previous record of 341,392 set in August 2023.
So far in fiscal year 2024, CBP had 988,819 total encounters with illegal immigrants at both the U.S. southern and U.S. northern border, according to CBP data. This figure is higher than the total encounters for the entirety of fiscal year 2020, which recorded 646,822 encounters.
Border Crisis
The record-setting numbers of illegal immigrant encounters at the U.S. border come ahead of House Republican efforts to impeach Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for his handling of the border crisis.
On Jan. 28, House Republicans unveiled two articles of impeachment against Mr. Mayorkas, citing “willful and systemic refusal to comply with the law” and “breach of public trust.”
“Throughout his tenure as Secretary of Homeland Security, [he] has repeatedly violated laws enacted by Congress regarding immigration and border security,” the resolution’s first article states.
“In large part because of his unlawful conduct, millions of aliens have illegally entered the United States on an annual basis with many unlawfully remaining in the United States. His refusal to obey the law is not only an offense against the separation of powers in the Constitution of the United States, it also threatens our national security and has had a dire impact on communities across the country.”
In the second impeachment article, Mr. Mayorkas is accused of willfully violating the public trust by having “knowingly made false statements, and knowingly obstructed lawful oversight of the Department of Homeland Security (hereinafter referred to as ‘DHS’), principally to obfuscate the results of his willful and systemic refusal to comply with the law.”
“[He] has engaged in this scheme or course of conduct through the following means: (1) [He] knowingly made false statements to Congress that the border is ’secure,‘ that the border is ’no less secure than it was previously,’ that the border is closed,’ and that DHS has ‘operational control’ of the border,” the article states.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) told Republican colleagues in a Jan. 26 “Dear Colleague” letter that he expects the full House to debate and vote on the articles as soon as this week.
All 15 Democrats on the committee are expected to oppose the articles of impeachment. Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), who is the ranking member of the committee, issued a response to the impeachment articles on Jan. 28.
“What is glaringly missing from these articles is any real charge or even a shred of evidence of high crimes or misdemeanors, the Constitutional standard for impeachment,” his response reads. ”That should come as no surprise because Republicans’ so-called ‘investigation’ of Secretary Mayorkas has been a remarkably fact-free affair. They are abusing Congress’ impeachment power to appease their MAGA members, score political points, and deflect Americans’ attention from their do-nothing Congress.”
The articles are scheduled for markup on Jan. 30 before the House Homeland Security Committee, led by Rep. Mark Green (R-Tenn.).
Epoch Times reporter Mark Tapscott contributed to this report.