Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin just confirmed what many Americans already suspected but were told was conspiracy theory. The Biden administration wasn’t just failing to secure the border. It was actively releasing terrorists after arresting them.
Let that sink in for a moment. These weren’t undocumented workers looking for a better life. We’re talking about individuals with ties to terrorist organizations, people who crossed illegally, claimed asylum under fake names, and then walked free into American communities. Under Trump, we’ve now arrested 2,210 terrorists who were already here. Most came over during the Biden years and got processed through a system that treated national security like a bureaucratic inconvenience.
Mullin didn’t mince words on the Ruthless Podcast. He laid out exactly how broken things had become. The previous administration released 97% of individuals it encountered within 27 hours. Twenty-seven hours. That’s barely enough time to verify a legitimate asylum claim, let alone conduct proper security screenings on people whose names might be fabricated. You know what happens when you rush that process? Terrorists slip through.
The House Judiciary Committee’s 2024 report backs this up with hard numbers. At least 99 illegal aliens on the terror watchlist were released into American communities. Three individuals with potential ISIS ties used Biden’s CBP One app to arrive at ports of entry and were processed right in. One al-Shabaab terrorist crossed illegally in 2023, and federal authorities didn’t realize their mistake until a year later when they finally captured him in Minnesota. A year. He had twelve months to do whatever he came here to do.
Now Trump has designated MS-13, Tren de Aragua, and the Sinaloa Cartel as terrorist organizations. These aren’t abstract threats operating in distant countries. They’re active throughout Latin America, exactly where massive waves of illegal immigration originate. The connection isn’t complicated. When you leave the border wide open and process people faster than you can verify their identities, bad actors will exploit that weakness. It’s not xenophobia to point this out. It’s common sense.
A former senior ICE official told the committee that Biden’s open-border policies made it harder to arrest national security threats already in the country. Think about that. Immigration enforcement wasn’t just failing at the border. The policies actively hampered efforts to catch dangerous individuals who’d already made it through. That’s not incompetence. That’s ideology overriding security.
Mullin credits Trump’s aggressive strategy for the massive arrest numbers. The directive is simple but profound. We’re no longer just playing defense. Trump gave DHS authority to go on offense, whether that’s cybersecurity operations or aggressively tracking down individuals who pose threats. Swimming upstream, as Mullin puts it. Going after the people coming after us.
This shift matters because defense alone never wins. You can build the tallest wall, hire the most agents, and install the best technology. But if your default posture is reactive rather than proactive, you’re always one step behind. Terrorists and cartels are strategic. They adapt. They probe for weaknesses. An offensive strategy disrupts their planning cycles and forces them to worry about getting caught rather than plotting attacks.
Just before the 25th anniversary of 9/11, Mullin vowed eternal vigilance to prevent another terrorist attack on American soil. Those aren’t empty words when you’ve just arrested over 2,000 terrorists who were living among us. The threat is real. It was always real. And for four years, one administration pretended it wasn’t.
The question Americans should be asking isn’t whether Trump’s approach is too aggressive. It’s why the previous administration thought national security was negotiable in the first place. Every terrorist released is a ticking clock. Every fake name accepted without verification is a gamble with American lives. We got lucky that most of these individuals were caught before acting. But luck isn’t a strategy, and hope isn’t a plan.
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