How much of a terrorist threat does the porous US/Mexico border pose to the average American citizen today? For those able to connect the dots, the (rather ominous) answer is readily available.

According to a recent Bloomberg report,

The Border Patrol … reported 172 encounters last fiscal year of people whose names appeared on a list of known or suspected terrorists and their associates. That’s a steep increase over previous years: 98 in 2022, 16 in 2021, three in 2020, and three in 2019. The agency has already seen 81 more so far this fiscal year, which began in October.

And 2024 already seems to be on the verge of breaking 2023’s record. In January alone, Border Patrol “encountered” 50 more people on terror watch lists.

Even so, the same Bloomberg report tries to minimize its findings:

But it’s a fraction of a percent of overall Border Patrol encounters. Last year’s 172 hits [of people with terrorist ties], for example, represented just 0.0083% of overall encounters of noncitizens at the northern and southern borders.

This is hardly reassuring. Since when has the ability to commit terrorism been based on numbers? If 19 jihadis can utterly traumatize the US, as they did on 9/11, surely even one terrorist is one terrorist too many.

But Wait! There’s More

As an example of who these people with terror links are, most recently, according to a July 10 report,

A record number of illegal immigrants from Tajikistan have entered the United States and been released by border patrol so far this year, despite the fact that the nation is known to be a recruitment hotbed for the Islamic State.

The report goes on to say that “hundreds of Tajiks have been allowed into the country” under the Biden administration. For the record, the ISIS terrorists who committed one of the most horrific terrorist attacks this year (which took place at the Crocus City Hall in Moscow in March) were Tajiks. And it took only four of them to massacre 145 civilians while seriously injuring more than 500. It was the deadliest attack in Europe in 20 years.

We should also remember that for every one, or 50, or 172 people with terror links that Border Patrol “encounters,” countless more have escaped and blended into the American public. Thus, according to a June 25 report, “50 immigrants brought to US through an ISIS-tied smuggling ring are unaccounted for by DHS.”

Then there are those terrorists who are captured — only to be released into the US again. In March, Mohammad Kharwin, an illegal from Afghanistan, was released “by an immigration judge who was not told he was a national security threat.” The judge ordered “no restrictions on his movements inside the U.S.”

Most Crimes Increase — But Not All

It’s interesting to note that, while all metrics of criminality have increased in the US in direct response to its growing illegal population, acts of terrorism have not — even though the entry of those with terror links has been increasing. For example, after pointing out that “In 2023 alone, Border Patrol agents have encountered thousands of illegal aliens with prior criminal convictions, including assault, rape, and murder,” one report goes on to point out that “64% of federal arrests in 2018 involved noncitizens, despite them comprising only 7% of the population at that time.”

Most if not all of these arrests were not terrorism-related, but dealt with “generic” crimes.

This may seem to pose a conundrum: If known terrorists are entering the US, why have we not witnessed another spectacular terrorist attack on American soil? This question becomes more intriguing when one realizes that people with terror links entering the US is a phenomenon that goes many years back — well before Joe Biden took office (though obviously at a much smaller rate). In 2012, for example, I wrote an article on this very topic of how Muslim terrorists were eyeing and crossing the border into the US. And the data I relied on went back to the early 2000s.

Moreover, those spelling out the threat in no uncertain terms go back years. In 2019, a captured Islamic State fighter actually confessed how, in an effort to terrorize America on its own soil, ISIS was committed to exploiting the porous US-Mexico border, including through the aid of ISIS-sympathizers living in the United States.

That was over five years ago: millions of unknown people have passed through the border since.

To sum up, we are left with these two facts:

• Many people with Islamic terror ties are illegally entering the US through the southern border with Mexico and the vast majority of them are not caught.
• Both statistics and common sense indicate that illegals bring with them a rise in the types of crimes they are known to have committed in their nations of origin: thus, as more drug dealers and rapists enter the US, drug-dealing (think fentanyl crisis) and sex crimes increase.

And yet… although the number of terrorist-affiliated people entering the US has also exponentially risen, we have not seen a commensurate rise in terrorist attacks on US soil from them.

Why?

The Long Game

For those who understand the jhadist mindset and the nature of terrorism, the answer should be clear: rapists, drug dealers, and criminals of all sorts act out their impulses in an instinctive and random manner.

But terrorists don’t.

Terrorism is methodical by nature. It revolves around small numbers of committed “believers” plotting and planning — and, most importantly, biding their time for the right moment to strike (which may be years down the line).

To achieve their goal, they often create and live out fake personas for years, to better blend in with their targeted population (such as the 9/11 hijackers, who patiently learned to fly planes in American schools under the guise that they were getting their pilots’ licenses). Another telling example concerns how a terror cell in Turkey infiltrated a church. For more than a year, the terrorists put on a sophisticated act, including feigning conversion to Christianity, regularly attending church, and all in all behaving “like family” to the congregation — though in reality they were planning a massive terror strike against the church.

Islam augments terrorism’s methodical, patient nature by doctrine and repeatedly mentions it in the Koran, as in 7:4: “How many a township have we destroyed! As a raid by night, or while they slept at noon, our terror came unto them.” The prophet of Islam himself, who began his career weak and outnumbered, confessed: “I have been made victorious with terror.”

Another reason why the many terrorists already ensconced in the US have not yet struck should be obvious: striking now, under the last vestiges of the Biden administration, which has left the border wide open, would be counterproductive; it would bring much more criticism and thus concrete moves to quickly seal the border, which would only work against the terrorists, who are no doubt still actively exploiting it. Much better to wait until, say, Donald Trump reenters the White House and quickly moves to seal off the border. At that point, not only will they have nothing to lose, but striking during Trump’s tenure would only undermine his prestige — a win-win for the jihadists.

In short, the fact that no major terror attack has taken place since the Mexico border was flung wide open is almost more ominous than if something minor had happened. Then we would know that those coming in with terror links are amateurs.

But the fact that we know there are ISIS-linked terrorists spread throughout the US who have done nothing yet is, regrettably, a sure sign that something big is in the works.

Raymond Ibrahim, author of Defenders of the West and Sword and Scimitar, is the Distinguished Senior Shillman Fellow at the Gatestone Institute and the Judith Rosen Friedman Fellow at the Middle East Forum.