GOP Sen. Marshall presses Biden admin for data on suspected terrorists encountered at the border

Kansas Republican Sen. Roger Marshall this week called on the Biden administration and the Department of Homeland Security to provide information on individuals on the terrorist watch list encountered at the southern border amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has reported encounters with more than 7 million people at the southwest land border since President Joe Biden took office and the porous Mexican frontier has prompted fears of terrorists entering the country en masse.

Marshall, during a Sunday appearance on Fox News, lamented that "We’ve encountered over 170 terrorists on the terrorist watch list in the past year."

"In the past two years, thousands of people on the alien watch list as well, 2,000 Chinese nationals on this watch list have crossed the border as well," he added. "All we're asking DHS to do is tell us where these people are, who they are, what they're doing, are they still in the country, were they caught and released? We don't want to be asleep at the wheel like Israel was when Hamas attacked Israel."

Last week, the House Homeland Security Committee reported on documents it obtained revealing that the Department of Homeland Security had released hundreds of thousands of inadmissible aliens to the U.S. interior through a migrant processing app, including a litany of arrivals from adversarial nations and terrorist hotbeds.

This included 94% of the 20,948 Russians, 93% of the 246 Afghans, 98% of 801 Belarusians, 88% of 18 Iranians, and 88% of 36 Chinese persons who scheduled appointments at U.S. ports of entry through the CBP One app.

Marshall attributed the administration's lax border policies to political opportunism, saying the president "thinks that those are future votes for the Democrat[ic] Party."

The Kansas lawmaker is far from the only one to express concerns of security threats at the border. Former Trump Deputy National Security Advisor Victoria Coates, during a recent appearance on the "Just the News, No Noise" television show, highlighted the Lebanon-based Hezbollah's activities in Latin America, saying "they've carried out attacks against Jewish targets in Argentina, for example. So they're here. And the notion that they haven't tried to cross the border in the last two and a half years, is pretty disingenuous."

Ben Whedon is an editor and reporter for Just the News. Follow him on X, formerly Twitter.