(Dmytro “Henry” Aleksandrov, Headline USA) An illegal immigrant who was on the terrorist watchlist was released into the U.S. by the Department of Homeland Security, in large part because of an overwhelming backlog of immigrants combined with multiple errors by officials.
Customs and Border Protection made multiple mistakes when they apprehended the illegal in the Yuma, Ariz., sector of the U.S. southern border in April 2022, according to the Daily Wire.
“U.S. Customs and Border Protection apprehended and subsequently released a migrant without providing information requested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Terrorist Screening Center [TSC] that would have confirmed the migrant was a positive match with the Terrorist Screening Data Set [Terrorist Watchlist],” the report stated.
“This occurred because CBP’s ineffective practices and processes for resolving inconclusive matches with the Terrorist Watchlist led to multiple mistakes.”
On Apr. 17, 2022, the Border Patrol apprehended a migrant and family members. The report used “their” and “them” pronouns to conceal the illegal’s biological sex, the agency said.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement moved to apprehend the individual after the release, when the criminal’s presence on the watchlist was discovered on Apr. 21, 2022. The ICE office in Tampa, Fla., stated that “the migrant could pose a national security risk.”
However, the illegal wasn’t arrested until May 6 because of bureaucracy and miscommunication, which prompted the DHS inspector general to recommend that Border Patrol implement a better system to identify individuals on the terrorist watchlist and for better information-sharing practices for ICE.
The agents in the Yuma sector said that one of the reasons why the illegal was originally released was that agents were busy processing “an increased flow of migrants.”
“CPC agents explained that the Yuma CPC was over capacity following an increase in apprehensions, which created pressure to quickly process migrants and decreased the time available to review each file,” the report stated.
DHS listened to the report’s recommendations and stated that it would clean up its system.
