Overwhelmed Border Patrol Releases Terrorism Suspect Into U.S.: Federal Audit; Border Agents Mistakenly Release Migrant On The Terror Watchlist Into The US

Overwhelmed Border Patrol releases terrorism suspect into U.S.: Federal audit:

The Border Patrol caught a terrorism suspect at the southern border but was too overwhelmed by the surge of migrants to properly flag the person and instead released the person into the country, according to a new government audit.

Once Homeland Security realized the bungle and sent agents to arrest the suspect, it took them more than two weeks to mount the operation because officers were waiting for paperwork to reach them and then had trouble getting access to the GPS tracking device the migrant was wearing, the department’s inspector general said.

Investigators said Customs and Border Protection must fix the errors or else it “risks releasing individuals into the United States who potentially threaten national security and public safety.”

The issue is of particular importance given the surging number of terrorism suspects being nabbed as they jump the southern border.

Some 125 have been caught between Oct. 1 and May 31, shattering last year’s previous record of 96, with a few months still to go in the fiscal year.

During the period from 2017 to 2020, under President Trump, there were a combined 11 Border Patrol arrests along the southern border of migrants whose identities are listed in the government’s terrorist screening data set, known colloquially as the terrorist watchlist.

In the case audited by the inspector general, a migrant was nabbed along with family members on April 17, 2022, in Yuma, Arizona. —>READ MORE HERE

Border Agents Mistakenly Release Migrant On The Terror Watchlist Into The US:

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) released a migrant on the terrorist watchlist due to ineffective practices within the department, a new report found.

On April 17, 2022, officials screened a migrant in Yuma, Arizona, and determined he was not a terrorist threat; additional screenings days later at Palm Springs International Airport indicated otherwise. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was only able to apprehend the migrant two weeks after the discovery due to internal complications with their removal operations branch, the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General reported.

This two-week delay was due to the ineffective information sharing between ICE and Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) and the terrorist screening center (TSC), the report found.

An example of this includes a failure to use the correct email addresses for government bodies: “CBP sent a request to interview the migrant to the wrong email address, obtained information requested by the TSC but never shared it, and released the migrant before fully coordinating with the TSC,” the report said.

After the migrant was evaluated in Yuma, officials there did not wait to verify that the National Targeting Center (NTC) and TSC were done screening him. Yuma officials pushed the migrant along without waiting for verification because they “did not have an adequate method to flag … individuals with inconclusive Terrorist Watchlist matches,” the report said. ––>READ MORE HERE

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