Terrorists, Saboteurs Suspected Among Migrants: ‘Era of Increased Terrorist Attacks in the Homeland’

As hundreds of thousands of migrants continue to pour across the U.S. southern border every month, U.S. lawmakers and others are concerned that terrorists and other bad actors who intend to harm U.S. citizens are among them. 

So far this year 169 individuals with positive terrorism watchlist matches were caught trying to cross the southern border into the United States, Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) said in a press release last week. Of course, that number doesn’t include others who may have slipped through unnoticed.

Capito, a member of the Senate Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee, said the exact affiliations and identities of those 169 individuals apprehended at the southern border remain classified. She said the number of individuals on the U.S. terror watchlist who tried to cross the border so far this year is a “tenfold increase” from the fiscal year 2021 numbers.

Capito and a group of Republican lawmakers led by Indiana U.S. Sen. Todd Young announced they were sending a letter to President Joe Biden demanding action at the southern border due to the rise in terrorist crossings.

“Our southern border is a matter of deep national concern and insecurity,” the lawmakers wrote. “With rising violence and economic crises around the world pushing many people towards our borders, the record levels of illegal crossings and the spike in Border Patrol apprehensions of individuals matching the U.S. terror watchlist are alarming.”

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Chinese Nationals Seeking Asylum

In a recent article for the Gatestone Institute, China analyst Gordon C. Chang warned that Chinese nationals are among those seeking asylum in the U.S.  

Chang explained those who want to cross the U.S. southern border and do not live on this side of the world, choose to fly into Quito, the capital of Ecuador. The reason? The South American country allows visa-free entry to Chinese and others from other parts of the world, including the Middle East and Central Asia. 

Chang also noted terrorists may be entering the U.S. via another route. Last month, 17 Chinese nationals landed at Key Largo, Florida from Cuba. 

“I don’t know who they are, why they’re here, or what they were doing,” U.S. Rep. Carlos Gimenez (R-FL) told The Daily Mail. Gimenez said he thinks that this was the first time migrants from China had tried to enter the U.S. through the Keys.

According to Chang, Venezuela’s regime has been using migration as a weapon against the United States. Joseph Humire of the Center for a Secure Free Society told Gatestone it is a weapon he calls “Strategic Engineered Migration.”

“It took only 19 terrorists to carry out 9/11,” Humire told Gatestone. “America is likely heading toward an era of increased terrorist attacks in the homeland.”

An Espionage Threat?

In an interview with CBN News’ The Global Lane in September, Chang said some infiltrators are likely coming across our southern border.

“Well, it’s definitely an espionage threat. There’s a pattern there,” he explained. “China uses every point of contact with the United States to undermine and destroy our society. So if you have one or two, quote-unquote, Chinese tourists who’ve tried to get onto a U.S. military base, well, you could say, well, those are just isolated incidents, but not 100 of them.”

“And we have to remember that we have all of these Chinese migrants coming across our southern border in unprecedented numbers,” host Gary Lane replied. “And although almost all of them are who they say they are, they’re just desperate and have given up on China, some of them appear to be saboteurs. There are packs of males in groups of 5 to 15 who are of military age, unaccompanied by family groups who pretend not to speak English.”

“And some of them are known to have links to the Chinese military,” Chang said. “These look like saboteurs, which means that on the first day of a war in China, we are going to be fighting these saboteurs on our own soil, which means for the first time since the war of 1812, Americans will have a sustained fight on American soil.”

Right now, 5,000-7,000 migrants from Central America, Venezuela, Cuba, and Haiti are on the way to the U.S. southern border in a caravan not seen since June of 2022.

Investigative journalist Anthony Rubin told Gatestone that he recently saw 300-400 people at Carreto, Panama on one of the routes used by migrants to journey north. Rubin said the majority of the group of people he saw there were Chinese.

U.S. Rep. Mark Green (R-TN), chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, said at a press conference in June that, based on his conversation with a U.S. Border Patrol sector chief, some of the Chinese migrants at the southern border have “known ties to the PLA.”

But who else is among the migrants? 

“I see aliens from over a hundred countries,” war correspondent Michael Yon, who is currently near the Darien Gap, told Gatestone, “including growing rivers of Chinese, Arabs of many sorts, Afghans of various sorts, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Iranians, Venezuelans, and on and on. By far, most are military-aged men unencumbered by impulse control or political correctness.”