A string of national security figures has warned Congress there is a heightened threat of a terrorist attack on U.S. soil. FBI Director Christopher Wray said there is an elevated threat of foreign terrorist organizations attacking the U.S. after the Hamas cross-border raid on Israel Oct. 7. Former President Trump and Republican members of Congress argue that on President Biden’s watch, the border crisis has become a major national security threat. They noted a spike in migrants from China crossing the southern border illegally since 2021, many of them military-age males, reports the Christian Science Monitor. Christopher O’Leary, an FBI counterterrorism veteran now with The Soufan Group, says the government has pivoted away from the terrorism threat to focus on Russia and China. He stresses the need to stay alert about U.S.-designated terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda and The Islamic State (ISIS).
The U.S. Border Patrol is encountering a far higher number of individuals on the terrorist watch list, with the annual total increasing from single digits during the Trump administration to 172 in fiscal year 2023. Wray warned Congress of the potential for a “coordinated attack” in the U.S., similar to the one that killed 145 people at a Moscow concert hall in March. ISIS claimed responsibility. The U.S. linked it to the Afghan branch of the organization, known as ISIS Khorasan (ISIS-K), which killed 13 U.S. service members and nearly 200 Afghans at the Kabul airport during the U.S. pullout in 2021. Russia identified four suspected assailants, all from Tajikistan. When U.S. authorities arrested eight Tajiks with potential ISIS ties who had crossed the southern border, it sparked a new round of warnings about a possible terrorist attack in the U.S. The concerns were amplified with a subsequent NBC report that more than 400 migrants, some of whom had been deported but others whose whereabouts were still unknown, had been brought into the U.S. by an ISIS-affiliated smuggling network.