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Good news: The Iranian caught in the trunk of a smuggler’s car illegally crossing the southern border last week wasn’t on the FBI’s terrorism watch list, as was previously reported.
Except … even if he wasn’t on the list, how is this not a terrifying sign of the national security threat we face?
The car-trunk Iranian highlights that intercontinental human smuggling networks do indeed bring people from the most adversarial nations in the world, as detailed in my recent book “America’s Covert Border War, the Untold Story of the Nation’s Battle to Prevent Jihadist Infiltration.”
Try as American law enforcement stationed abroad might to disrupt them, these smuggling organizations very much still can and do mainline strangers into Texas from countries where Islamic terrorist groups operate — along with those from nations like Russia, Syria and China.
Last fiscal year, the Border Patrol apprehended 98 immigrants who were on the FBI’s terrorism watch list — an all-time record — and 38 more have been caught in just October, November and December, according to US Customs and Border Protection’s public statistics website.