The House homeland security committee held a hearing on Sept. 19, probing the terrorism threat possibly posed by illegal immigration. Republicans warned that a single wrong person entering the country could stage an attack. Democrats argued numbers show that so far, illegal immigration has not put the United States at risk.
Congress today again investigating the immigration crisis at our southern border.
The focus of today's hearing the impact illegal immigration has on the terrorism threat in the
U.S. Entities Arian Pazdar has what lawmakers from both sides of the aisle are saying.
It only takes one terrorist to perform an extreme act of violence.
The House Homeland Security Committee on Thursday probing the impact illegal immigration has on
terror threats in the U.S. Multiple Republicans spoke about illegal immigrants who show up on
the terror watch list. The number of such encounters has gone up from 11 during the
Trump administration to almost 400 during the Biden administration so far. From your time
working as a military advisor in DHS to now what has changed? In my opinion it is the
change of policy that has emboldened the terrorists to come to our borders more so
than they ever have before. Congressman Morgan Luttrell is a former Navy SEAL. He pointed to
his military background saying the U.S. has to do everything possible to keep out potential terrorists.
If we don't do everything that one thing we don't do is going to get us killed. Do you want to spend
100% of U.S. GDP on counterterrorism? I don't know if you know my background or not or that
man sitting over there but our job was to do everything period and that's why we were 99.9%
successful. Now many Democrats at Thursday's hearing suggested that illegal immigration does
not increase the risk of terrorist attacks and some of them also alleged fear-mongering by
Republicans including former President Trump. Congressman Luke Correa says the threat of
terrorism actually comes from within the U.S. Most terrorist activity is conducted by United
States citizens. DHS and FBI regularly tell us that the one of the greatest terrorism threats
we have is domestic terrorism. Domestic terrorism. One of his colleagues mentioned an alleged rise
in violent crime caused by illegal immigrants. He showed a graph depicting the number of homicides
in the U.S. over recent decades. This is data collected by police departments and the FBI and
others. Do you agree that the country is safer today as it relates to homicides than in the
70s 80s and 90s? Yes absolutely and I want to point out the immigrant population is substantially
higher today too. He added that his graph also shows that there was a spike in homicides in 2022
while Trump was president. Arian Pastar, NTD News.
