Federal authorities don’t have a true count of how many Palestinians are crossing U.S. borders illegally, Daily Caller News Foundation reporter Jennie Taer said on Sky News Australia Thursday.
Federal border authorities apprehending Palestinian migrants crossing into the U.S. illegally are counting them as other nationalities, including Israeli, this reporter exclusively reported Wednesday. The revelation followed a DCNF report about Border Patrol warning of possible encounters of Hamas, Hezbollah and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) terrorists at the southern border. (RELATED: Ted Cruz Raises Concerns Over Federal Memo Warning Hamas, Hezbollah Could Be Crossing Southern Border)
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“Federal border authorities in the United States are warning that these terrorists could be exploiting a situation at the southern border right now to cross into the U.S. illegally,” this reporter told Sky News Australia host James Morrow.
“The situation is that we just don’t know how many Palestinians are coming across because … the U.S. doesn’t recognize Palestine as a country,” this reporter said.
Border Patrol’s internal system for recording a migrant’s country of origin doesn’t include Palestine, Gaza or the West Bank, according to screenshots of the internal system recently obtained by the DCNF. One agent who’s previously apprehended migrants with Palestinian Authority passports told the DCNF that they classified them as coming from Israel.
“When the country of origin is being recorded, even if the migrant has a Palestinian Authority issued passport, if they do have documents they are normally categorized as Israeli … just because that is the nearest option,” this reporter said.
Illegal immigration continues to surge, with fiscal year 2023 ending with more than 2 million migrant encounters total at the southern border, according to federal data.
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