The Biden administration is scrambling to close an intelligence sharing gap after at least six people on the terror watchlist were let into the US over the last two years.
Men with ties to US designated terror groups including Somalia’s al Shabaab and Afghanistan’s Hezb-e-Islami (HEB) were all vetted by border officers and allowed into the US, before later being found to be on watchlists.
Under current rules, immigration judges and asylum officers — who interview migrants to see if they qualify for entry into the US — are barred from accessing certain classified information held by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which would help them make better decisions about whether migrants are terrorists or national security threats.
DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas now plans to increase automatic access to that information for judges and asylum officers, rolling back an order which stood since 2004 barring them from it except in certain exceptional circumstances, as first reported by NBC.
However, some feel the order is coming far too late, after almost four years of crisis at the border which have seen over seven million arrested for attempting to enter the US illegally, according to Customs and Border Protection figures.
“Now the administration is becoming reactive,” former immigration judge Edwin Pieters, who left the bench last year, told The Post of the policy change.
During his tenure as an immigration judge, Pieters said he’d have to take DHS at their word that they had completed “satisfactory” background checks on the cases he oversaw.
“Honestly, I don’t know why they held us back and it’s only coming up because a news report came out and now they’re trying to play catch up,” he added.
Pieters was referring to the case of Afghan migrant Mohammad Kharwin, 48, who illegally entered the US near San Ysidro, Calif., in March of 2023.
He was arrested by border officers but processed and released into the country. Almost a year later the FBI notified Immigration and Customs Enforcement Kharwin was a suspected member of the terror organization Hezb-e-Islami, or HIG.
Kharwin was re-arrested February 28 in San Antonio, Texas, but briefly let go after DHS failed to inform the immigration judge of his suspected terror ties. He was then arrested again April 11.
Former immigration judge Matt O’Brien, who is now at the Immigration Reform Law Institute, told The Post DHS is supposed to disclose information on even possible terror ties in court, but it appears they failed to do so in certain recent cases.
“What I suspect happened here is that the current administration’s lax approach to national security bit it in the posterior and in a desperate ‘cover your ass’ move it’s now trying to make it look like it’s closing a loophole that never existed in the first place,” O’Brien said.
Andrew Arthur, former terrorism prosecutor with the Immigration and Naturalization Service and fellow with the Center for Immigration Studies, said he believes with watchlisted migrants being let into the country and incidents such as two illegal immigrants trying to breach Marine Base Quantico in Virginia, the Biden administration needs to be wary of a full-blown terrorist attack.
“I think the Biden administration is very concerned there is going to be an October surprise and one or more of these people are going to do something,” Arthur told The Post.
“I think the Biden administration is very concerned … I think they’re only now waking up to the fact that this would be an electoral disaster for Democrats and for Biden if one of these guys were to do something. This is a huge vulnerability politically and I think it’s a huge national security vulnerability.”
The DHS didn’t respond to The Post’s request for comment.
In February, ICE also admitted a 27-year-old Somali man, who has not been identified by name, was released by border authorities into the country after he crossed the border illegally into California despite being a “confirmed member of al Shabaab,” designated a terrorist group by the US.
The man was listed on the terror watchlist for his alleged involvement “in the use, manufacture or transportation of explosives or firearms,” but was released after border agents got wrong information. ICE later realized the error and he was arrested in January in Minnesota.
