Biden Border Failures Allowed 18,000 Individuals With Terror Ties to Enter American Communities

The facts are staggering, and they represent a catastrophic failure of the most basic governmental responsibility: protecting American citizens from foreign threats.

According to testimony delivered to Congress by National Counterterrorism Center Director Joe Kent, the Biden administration’s border policies facilitated the entry of approximately 18,000 known or suspected terrorists into the United States over four years. These are not hypothetical threats or statistical anomalies. These are individuals with documented ties to jihadist organizations including ISIS and Al-Qaeda who are now living in American communities.

Let us be absolutely clear about what this means. Under standard immigration procedures and national security protocols, these individuals would have been categorically barred from entry. Instead, the Biden administration not only permitted their entry but, according to Kent’s testimony, actively facilitated it in many cases.

The numbers become even more alarming when examining specific programs. Operation Allies Welcome, the Biden administration’s initiative to relocate Afghan nationals following the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, brought approximately 88,000 Afghans to the United States. Of that number, intelligence officials have now identified 2,000 individuals with ties to terrorist organizations.

The consequences of this negligence are not theoretical. They are written in blood on American soil.

Twenty-year-old National Guardsman Sarah Beckstrom was killed in Washington earlier this year when an Afghan national opened fire on her and fellow Guardsman Andrew Wolfe, who remains hospitalized fighting for his life. The shooter, 29-year-old Rahmanullah Lakanwal, entered the United States through Operation Allies Welcome.

This was not an isolated incident. Last year, authorities arrested a 27-year-old Afghan national in Oklahoma who was allegedly planning an Election Day terrorist attack. He too had been admitted through the same program.

Kent’s testimony reveals the depth of the vetting failure. The administration claimed these individuals were properly screened, but the evidence demonstrates otherwise. “These individuals, despite what has been reported, were not vetted properly to come into the United States,” Kent stated unequivocally.

The excuse offered by the administration is particularly galling. According to Kent, the Biden administration used tactical-level vetting conducted for Afghan military service as justification for admitting individuals to the United States. This represents either stunning incompetence or willful negligence. Vetting someone to serve in a local military capacity in Afghanistan bears no resemblance to the thorough background investigation required for immigration to the United States.

Kent characterized the current situation as the number one threat facing American national security, stating plainly: “The fact that we don’t know who came into our country in the last four years of Biden’s open borders” represents an existential danger to American communities.

Federal agencies are now scrambling to locate and monitor these 18,000 individuals. The FBI, Department of Homeland Security, and intelligence community are working to track down the 2,000 Afghans with terror ties, plus an additional 16,000 individuals with connections to terrorist organizations who entered through other channels.

This represents a fundamental betrayal of the social contract between government and governed. The primary purpose of any government is to protect its citizens from foreign threats. The Biden administration inverted this responsibility, prioritizing ideological commitments to open borders over the safety of American citizens.

The results speak for themselves. Families are grieving. Communities are less safe. And thousands of individuals with terrorist connections are living freely in the United States, their exact whereabouts and intentions unknown to authorities.

This is not a policy disagreement. This is a national security catastrophe of historic proportions.

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