Many politicians are worried that terrorists hidden among the illegal immigrants, asylum seekers, and unaccompanied alien children are currently crossing the Southwest border from Mexico. The most recent example is a brutal grilling of Department of Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas by Representative Dan Bishop (R‑NC). In that interview, the secretary even stated that “known or suspected terrorist — KST is the acronym that we use — individuals who match that profile have tried to cross the border, the land border, have tried to travel by air into the United States not only this year, but last year, the year prior, so on and so forth.”
Here are the facts about terrorists crossing the border from Mexico: Zero people have been killed or injured in attacks on U.S. soil committed by terrorists who illegally crossed the Southwest border. From 1975 through the end of 2020, only nine people convicted of planning a terrorist attack entered the United States illegally – some of them on ships, airplanes, and walking across the border. For instance, the most serious case was Walid Kabbani who walked across the Canadian border with a bomb in 1987 and was immediately arrested. Only three of the nine who entered illegally came across the border with Mexico as young children in 1984, 23 years before they were arrested for a comically planned terrorist attack on Fort Dix in 2007. They were Shain Duka, Britan Duka, and Eljvir Duka.
The reporting about whether terrorists are crossing the border is not clear and many people are confusing and conflating known or suspected terrorist (KST), being the terrorist watchlist, and what it means to be a Special Interest Alien (SIA) when talking about the risk of terrorism on the border. Secretary Mayorkas may have even done so yesterday. According to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), a known terrorist is “an individual who has been (a) arrested, charged by information, indicted for, or convicted of a crime related to terrorism and/or terrorist activities by U.S. Government or foreign government authorities; or (b) identified as a terrorist or a member of a terrorist organization pursuant to statute, Executive Order, or international legal obligation pursuant to a United Nations Security Council Resolution.” A suspected terrorist “is an individual who is reasonably suspected to be engaging in, has engaged in, or intends to engage in conduct constituting, in preparation for, in aid of, or related to terrorism and/or terrorist activities.”
A Special Interest Alien (SIA) is an apprehended border crosser from a country that the U.S. government has deemed a potential source of terrorism. As David Bier and I wrote years ago, there isn’t an updated go-to list of countries where SIAs come from and the lists that are released keep changing.
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