Inspector General Joseph V. Cuffari has accused Customs and Border Protection (CBP) of missing "multiple opportunities to…verify that an individual on the Terrorist Screening Center's watchlist was a positive Terrorist Watchlist match before releasing the migrant" in Yuma, Arizona in April of 2022.
Though the suspect was apprehended a month later, the report warns that unless CBP corrects "ineffective practices," the threats to national security will continue.
"One of the officers who was interviewed by the inspector general in putting together this report said, 'We're so overwhelmed that we just don't have time to give proper scrutiny,'" relays Ira Mehlman of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). "When you don't have time to give proper scrutiny, bad things can happen, and this is one instance that we know about."
He points out that an untold number of other terrorists have likely made it through the border without being encountered by anyone.
"That's what really should worry us," says Mehlman. "We can count the people that we encounter; we cannot count the people who pose the danger, who are among the 1.5 million got-aways who have entered the country since President Biden took office."
Mehlman concludes that this problem was not created in Yuma, Arizona, but 2,520 miles away in Washington, D.C.
