Republican senators pushed government intelligence officials to better guard Americans from national security threats, including Hamas terrorists, who could seek to enter the United States under the Biden administration.

Sens. Tom Cotton (R-AR) and Joni Ernst (R-IA) raised significant concerns during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing Thursday that the Biden administration’s reported plan to accept refugees from Gaza, in particular, could open the U.S. to bigger problems despite existing screening and vetting protocols for immigrants.

“A recent poll found that 71% of Gazans viewed Hamas’s brutal attack on Israel, including the rape of innocent women, their murder of children, and their murder of and capture of Americans as ‘the correct decision,'” Ernst said, a reference to a Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research poll. “And yet our president is considering an action to bring Gazan refugees to our homeland.”

Ernst asked Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines and the Air Force Defense Intelligence Agency director, Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse, if the proposed White House action would definitely not put Americans at risk.

“The process for bringing individuals into the United States includes a very significant vetting process that would be the kind of process I would expect to occur and so therefore, that would mitigate against any concern,” Haines said.

Ernst fired back and pointed to the Biden administration’s decision to airlift tens of thousands of Afghans from Kabul in 2021 as an example of the government’s failure to identify and vet people being brought into the country.

The Washington Examiner exposed the botched security operation in late 2021.

Former President Donald Trump also suggested that admitting refugees from Gaza could lead to an Oct. 7-style attack on the U.S.

Pressed on the assertion Thursday, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said, “I obviously disagree with that statement.” While she didn’t speak to the Gaza refugee plan specifically, she said vetting those coming into the United States “is something that we take very, very seriously.”

Cotton echoed Ernst’s concerns and called such an idea to bring in Gazans an “insane” proposal.

But Cotton was more concerned about illegal immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border after Hamas’s October 2023 attack on Israel.

“Since then, do you think that there may be an even greater surge of Islamic extremists trying to come across our open southern border?” Cotton asked.

“We haven’t seen Hamas directing, essentially, folks or others in the region to come into the United States to engage in attacks from the Gaza conflict,” Haines said. “That doesn’t mean that obviously, this isn’t something that can develop over time, but we’re not seeing that related to the Gaza conflict.

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“It’s absolutely, you know, appropriate to be vigilant on these issues,” Haines continued.

Cotton noted that in San Diego, federal border officials have been put on alert to be on the lookout for “foreign fighters” of the Israel-Hamas conflict.