The Senate’s border funding bill will include a provision that seeks to crack down on terrorists crossing the southern border, a leadership aide told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
The section would immediately bar individuals on the terrorist watchlist from accessing the asylum adjudication process, according to the Senate aide, who requested anonymity so as not to compromise ongoing negotiations. Republican Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma, independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut are currently negotiating the terms of the deal.
The aide referenced a Monday DCNF report on a federal memo that outlined how federal border authorities allowed an al-Shabaab terrorist to roam the country for nearly a year after crossing into California illegally before Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) nabbed him. (RELATED: Feds See Highest Ever Number Of Southern Border Crossings In A Single Month)
“Under the proposed bill, an illegal alien wouldn’t just be run through the terror watch list and sent on his way. Instead, he would be detained and put through an expedited removal proceeding where his initial, intensive screening would include the terrorism bar to admission. This means that a terrorist like this al-Shabaab associate would be identified in detention and then deported—rather than running around Minnesota for a year,” the aide said.
During fiscal year 2023, which ended on September 30, Border Patrol caught 172 individuals on the terrorist watchlist attempting to enter the United States illegally. From October through December, Border Patrol caught another 50 individuals on the terrorist watchlist, according to federal data.
“Current law typically applies bars to admission for asylum seekers—like whether or not the alien is a terrorist, or a criminal, or a communist persecutor—during their actual asylum adjudication, which means that terrorists, criminals, and communist persecutors can spend years in country before being removed, if ever. Because the proposed bill would apply those bars at the outset of all asylum claims, it would remove terrorists, criminals, and communist persecutors, within days or weeks and not within years,” the aide said.
+150 people on the Terrorist Watch List tried to cross the southern border last year—that we know of.
The border crisis is a national security crisis. https://t.co/69zA4JfadS
— Sen. James Lankford (@SenatorLankford) January 29, 2024
The deal would shut down the processing of any illegal migrant when the average number of illegal crossings exceeds 5,000 per day until the two-week average of entries falls below 3,750, according to details of the deal leaked to the press on Friday.
Lankford recently claimed that there’s “misinformation” regarding the ongoing negotiations.
“There’s a lot of misinformation out there right now that — I hear this comment that it waves in 5,000 people, it hands out work permits – all those things are not true. There’s just a lot of internet rumors that are running around on this right now,” Lankford stated Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”
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