Chronic Counter-terrorism Lapses at the Border

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A US Customs and Border Patrol agent monitors the barrier separating the U.S. and Mexico in Nogales, Arizona. (Photo: Manuela Durson)

By Todd Bensman

Originally published by Jewish Policy Center

In the early morning hours of May 3, a Jordanian immigrant who illegally crossed the US-Mexico border a month earlier joined with another illegally present Jordanian. Together they drove a large box truck to the entry gates of Quantico Marine Corps Base in northern Virginia.

The driver announced they were Amazon subcontractors there to make a delivery to the Quantico town post office just inside. But after neither could produce credentials and were denied entry, the driver hit the gas in an apparent attempt to plow the truck through and into the base’s target-rich interior. Quick-thinking military sentries raised automatic road barricades, arrested the pair for trespassing, and turned them over to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Local media soon reported that one of the Jordanians was on the FBI’s terrorism watch list.

The White House and all involved federal agencies have steadfastly stonewalled questions as to whether an illegal, border-crossing alien from Jordan on the FBI’s terrorism watch list had just attempted a jihad-motivated attack on US soil for the first known time. It is an often ridiculed scenario, but one that government experts have been warning about, including the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) own 2024 threat assessment, since the worst mass migration crisis in US history began on January 20, 2021 – President Joe Biden’s Inauguration Day.

Among the estimated seven million illegal immigrants from 160 countries around the world that Border Patrol agents encountered in just the few years since were 362 illegal immigrants who were on the FBI’s terrorism watch list – all detained.

But the fact that one of these border-crossing Jordanians was reportedly on the FBI’s watch list – and nevertheless was NOT detained but left free inside the country to ram a large truck through into an important military base – is emblematic of a serious new kind of national security threat to the US homeland.

Mohammad Kharwin

In at least seven recent cases, Border Patrol agents, overwhelmed by the crisis, have accidentally released illegal border-crossers who were on the US terror watch list. Their belated discoveries prompted panicked nationwide manhunts to round them up before they could conduct terror attacks. Was the Jordanian at Quantico one of them? No one knows.

But a twice-freed Afghan national man was the most recent of these. The 48-year-old Mohammad Kharwin roamed America for 11 months between his border crossing and his capture. This case and too many others demand that the federal government acknowledge emergence of a patterned new chronic national security emergency requiring elevation to the highest priority within the intelligence community, federal law enforcement, and Congress.

An overwhelmed Border Patrol freed Kharwin into America on March 10, 2023, before agents could confirm the FBI watch list hit that initially flagged him and then, a swamped Texas immigration court freed a second time in February.

By current public accounts, an initial Border Patrol database check flagged Kharwin for membership in Hezb-e-Islami, which the US Director of National Intelligence (DNI) describes as a “virulently anti-Western insurgent group.” He illegally crossed the California border in March 2023, one of 23,286 illegal aliens caught crossing that month in what would turn out to be a record-breaking year for the agency’s San Diego Border Sector. All told, there were 230,941 illegal crossers caught in 2023, up nearly 60,000 from 2022 and 90,000 more than 2021.

That extraordinary traffic no doubt strained all normal Border Patrol counterterrorism and vetting processes.

Instead of keeping Kharwin detained as a “special interest alien,” tagged until standard face-to-face interviews and corroboration of the initial hit was complete, Border Patrol agents – under orders from Washington – waved him through like millions of other illegal crossers on “Alternatives to Detention” (ATD) personal recognizance papers, where crossers agree to voluntarily report later to ICE in a city of their choice.

NBC reports that Border Patrol never even informed ICE of the initial FBI watch-list flagging, which is evidently how the same collapsed border management system missed a second opportunity to catch Kharwin in late January of this year, when he showed up before an immigration judge in a Pearsall, TX, ICE detention facility for a hearing. Perhaps because ICE still didn’t have the initial terrorism flag hit, that agency’s court lawyer representative did not report it to the judge, or appeal, when Kharwin was ordered released on $12,000 bond for a distant 2025 hearing.

“The judge placed no restrictions on his movements inside the US” in the meantime, NBC reported.

Somehow, the FBI figured all of this out and got word to ICE agents to find and arrest Kharwin, which they did a month later, on February 28, in nearby San Antonio.

And Others

To date, only one federal investigation has produced a public report branding the problem, remarkable but forgotten or given short shrift by major US news media, although I did write about it. That eye-opening document was the DHS inspector general’s office report about the April 19, 2022 crossing and mistaken release of a Colombian on the FBI watch list. ICE agents were not able to track him down to Florida for two long weeks.

Its key finding was that Border Patrol and ICE agents couldn’t do normal counterterrorism protocols because they were simply too “busy processing an increased flow of migrants.”

But these six other cases qualify as investigation-worthy.

In February 2024, North Carolina authorities arrested an immigrant, Awet Hagos, reportedly from Eritrea, for allegedly firing a rifle outside a Carolina Quick Stop store in the small town of Eure. He then attacked responding Gates County Sheriff’s deputies and barricaded himself in a four-hour standoff with them. Sheriff Ray Campbell reported that an ICE fingerprints check revealed that Hagos was on the watch list, the sheriff later told local news. North Carolina’s Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, running for the governor’s office this November, penned a letter to President Biden demanding answers about Hagos. But these moves drew scant coverage from local newspapers and gained no known traction.

In February 2024, a Pakistani illegal immigrant on the watch list who had crossed from Mexico into California, was accidentally released for a day before US authorities, luckily, uncovered the release error and caught up with him.

In late 2023, New York police arrested a Senegalese man wanted in his home country for “terrorist activities” who somehow got into the American interior.

In 2022, Border Patrol waved through a watch-listed Somali member of the al-Shabaab terrorist group near San Diego. He was free for nearly a year before authorities untangled their mistake and finally picked him up in Minneapolis.

Also in 2022, ICE released an FBI watch-listed Lebanon-born Venezuelan who had crossed from Matamoros into Brownsville, TX. Washington ordered him released on grounds that the man was at risk of catching Covid. This release occurred against ardent FBI recommendations that he remain in detention because he was both dangerous and a flight risk. FBI documents on this case leaked, no doubt out of an overabundance of frustration among those in the intelligence community who dealt with it. I have them.

A late 2021 accidental release case of Yemen national Ahmed Mohammed Ahmed shows that Mexico too is struggling with the Biden-fomented mass migration crisis. Mexico has long been a close partner of the United States in counterterrorism at the border. But in this case, Mexico released the Yemeni terrorism suspect without informing its US partners, resulting in a “Be On the Lookout” bulletin that made its way to me about a manhunt alert that went out on the Texas side of the border.

How Many Have we Missed?

Terrorism threat border lights have been flashing red for some time now just from the hundreds who were actually caught and detained, especially since the US Customs and Border Protection agency in March 2022 began publishing “Terrorist Screening Data Set Encounters” by the month on its public-facing website. Those began breaking all national records when the Biden government took office in January 2021, when apprehended illegal border crossers on the FBI watch list ballooned from a mere three during Trump’s last fiscal year in office to 15, then by another 98 in fiscal 2022, then 169 in fiscal 2023, and another 80 through April 2024.

That all those who were caught is less a positive national security accomplishment than an unacceptable sampling of much bigger flows of watch-listed illegal aliens coming into America who are not caught and handled. If some two million of these so-called “got-aways” went through since 2021 (like Kharwin evidently tried to, or possibly the Jordanian at Quantico), more suspected terrorists on the FBI watch list are almost certainly among them.

In recent months, the terrorism threat at the border has generated some public concern, but almost never explicitly about the preventable accidental releases of terrorist suspects authorities later had to chase down.

In September 2023, I testified about the accidental release problem before the US House Subcommittee on the Judiciary in juxtaposition with my 2021 book America’s Covert Border War, which revealed counterterrorism programs at the border that have kept the nation safe from infiltrated attacks for nearly 20 years. I told the members that Biden’s border crisis had severely compromised those old programs and caused a spate of accidental terror suspect releases, which elevated the threat of terror attack as a result.

Until then, concern was on the rise but never explicitly named accidental releases as a problem.

Threat Assessment 2024

The Biden Administration’s own 2024 Homeland Threat Assessment generally warns that “terrorists may exploit the elevated flow and increasingly complex security environment to enter the United States” and that “individuals with potential terrorism connections continue to attempt to enter the Homeland illegally between ports of entry…via the southern border.”

In recent testimony about what he regards as a rising terrorist border infiltration threat, FBI Director Christopher Wray told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that a “wide array of very dangerous threats…emanate from” the southwest border, including the designated terror group ISIS.

Despite the variably specific warnings about the border infiltration threat, the ever-growing number of known accidental-release cases such as Kharwin’s and the ones I earlier told the subcommittee about, remains broadly unrecognized as the unique emerging threat problem these cases indicate. Probably because no one has been killed yet as a consequence, few federal agencies or homeland security committee lawmakers seem interested in calling it out.

But why must blood run in the streets before something is done?

Triple Down

These cases demand a public accounting as well as a classified briefing to Congress if one hasn’t happened. Each demands a full investigation that produces not only recommendations for better counterterrorism but also consequences for those up and down the chains of command who perpetrated these failures.

If federal agencies won’t do the right thing, lawmakers in both houses of Congress should compel investigations into these accidental releases and turn up the political pressure with public hearings that force top officials to testify. They must propose legislation, send demand letters to DHS and other relevant agencies, and justifiably rant about this at their bully pulpits before it’s too late to do any of that, which it might well be.

Short of vastly reducing the millions-per-year border crossings by restoring former president Donald Trump’s discarded policies, the Biden Administration could at least be forced to triple down on its counterterrorism resources at the southern border.

Todd Bensman is Senior National Security Fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies and author of OVERRUN: How Joe Biden Unleashed the Greatest Border Crisis in U.S. History.

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Mounties Should Probe Criminal Obstruction in Bill Blair’s Office Warrant Delay, Says Former Senior CSIS and RCMP Officer

Published on November 18, 2024

Todayville

In August 2015, then-federal Liberal candidate Bill Blair (back center, tallest) joined Liberal Party officials, including candidate John McCallum and then-Ontario Minister of Citizenship, Immigration, and International Trade Michael Chan, at a ‘Team Trudeau’ federal election fundraiser in Greater Toronto Area. Source: John McCallum/Facebook.

By Sam Cooper

54 days created a big window for them to realize who was on this list, whose communications might be captured, and to go into damage control mode: Alan Treddenick, CSIS Veteran

Testimony from senior ministers and aides in Justin Trudeau’s administration at the Hogue Commission—marked by contradictions and conspicuous lapses in memory—has sparked calls for a criminal obstruction investigation into the months-long delay of a warrant targeting Michael Chan, a prominent Liberal Party fundraiser. Alan Treddenick, a former senior officer in Canadian police and intelligence services with extensive experience in domestic and international operations, warns the delay raises critical questions: Were party officials connected to the explosive warrant tipped off, as Public Safety Minister Bill Blair’s staff weighed its political fallout ahead of the Liberal Party’s election campaign?

The inquiry revealed that Blair and his top aide were briefed by CSIS around March 2021 on the pending warrant for Michael Chan. The document, which outlined a list of individuals potentially in communication with Chan, remained in Blair’s office for at least 54 days before it was approved. The prolonged delay constrained CSIS’s ability to act, leaving only about two months before the September 2021 federal election.

“The 54 days created a big window of opportunity for them to realize who was on this list, whose communications might be captured, and to go into damage control mode,” Treddenick said in an interview. “In my opinion, that would have meant quietly advising people on the list to be cautious about communications with certain individuals.”

Another expert, Duff Conacher, an ethics and transparency activist, calls the case involving Bill Blair and his chief of staff, Zita Astravas, perhaps the most serious conflict of interest matter he has ever seen in Ottawa.

“Both Blair and Astravas should have recused themselves,” Conacher said in an interview. “If a warrant targets someone affiliated with the politician’s party, there’s a clear risk of a cover-up, delay, or actions that protect the warrant’s subject.”

Emphasizing the stakes of the delay, a national security source—who cannot be identified due to ongoing leak investigations by the RCMP and CSIS—told The Bureau that CSIS officers had allegedly sought to plant surveillance devices inside a mansion Michael Chan was completing in Markham.

According to the source, CSIS officers were pushing to secure a national security warrant for Chan to allow such measures, but delays in 2021 left them frustrated. They noted that the opportunity to covertly install recorders inside Chan’s home during its construction had already passed.

In his testimony Chan acknowledged fundraising and campaigning for over 40 federal and provincial candidates, including prominent Liberal leaders such as Justin Trudeau, Paul Martin, Michael Ignatieff, Sheila Copps and John McCallum. He has vehemently denied any involvement in Chinese election interference and has publicly called himself a victim of CSIS investigations and media leaks.

Blair and Astravas strongly rejected allegations of inappropriate handling of the warrant during their testimony. Conservative MP Michael Chong’s lawyer, Gib van Ert, pressed Astravas, suggesting, “The warrant involved high-ranking members of your party and people you had known for years—isn’t that why you wanted to delay it?”

“That is false. Minister Blair has approved every warrant put before him,” Astravas replied.

Van Ert countered, “But he didn’t get it for 54 days, because of you.”

“Your accusation is false,” Astravas retorted.

The Bureau asked Treddenick for his assessment of the explosive evidence, focusing on the unprecedented delay in warrant approval and the testimony highlighting Blair’s chief of staff’s pointed interest in the so-called Van Weenen list.

This interview has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.

An image from a 2016 Globe and Mail profile on key players in PM Trudeau’s office, with points of interest for this story annotated in red lines by The Bureau.

Alan Treddenick:

“Let me start by saying I’m astonished that others in the media haven’t picked up or devoted any time to this issue. It made a bit of a splash during the commission, but then it seemed to disappear.

From Bill Blair to his chief of staff, to Katie Telford, the Prime Minister’s chief of staff, even the Prime Minister’s testimony. There were memory lapses, confusion about responsibility, decision-making, and who had access to the document. This is unprecedented in my 32 years with the RCMP and CSIS—it’s unprecedented for a warrant application to sit in the minister’s office for 54 days. That’s one point.

Two, the Van Weenen lists aren’t new. They started within criminal jurisprudence and were adopted into National Security and CSIS Act warrant applications to give justices a broader picture of who might be captured in a target’s interception.

In this case, the 54-day delay is concerning—one, because as I said, it’s unprecedented; two, because of the number of people who would have had access to this in the minister’s office; and three, because during that 54-day period, that document didn’t just sit in somebody’s basket.

Typically, warrant applications with Van Weenen lists go through without issue. But this one raised questions, and Blair’s history as a Toronto police officer doesn’t suggest he would have been involved in stalling it. I put this down to his chief of staff—who is not incompetent; she’s a very savvy political operative, close to Trudeau’s chief of staff Katie Telford, from their Ontario Liberal Party days. So my concern in this whole thing is that the 54 days allowed a big window of opportunity for them once they realized who was on this list—whose communications could be captured when communicating with the target. And the damage control mode, in my opinion, would’ve been quiet conversations somehow with people that are on the Van Weenen list. To say be careful when you’re talking or communicating with so-and-so, because you never know who’s listening.

Images from YouTube videos show Michael Chan attending campaign events and a fundraising dinner with Justin Trudeau and John McCallum.

The Van Weenen list was mentioned briefly in the Commission hearings, but I haven’t seen anyone really delve into it. When the Commission releases its final report, will it be part of the classified reporting? I don’t know. Have they asked people on the list to testify? I don’t know. It definitely needs some sort of review.”

The Bureau:

Based on my understanding, high-level sources informed me from the start that this investigation related to CSIS’s belief that the warrant’s target could influence the Prime Minister’s Office regarding the replacement of a sitting MP. My sources say this could be the most concerning counterintelligence threat for CSIS at that time due to the potential influence on the Prime Minister and his staff from a key party fundraiser to fix an important riding seat. Could you comment on that?

Alan Treddenick:

“If that’s accurate, it certainly would’ve been included in the affidavit to justify the powers for CSIS to further the investigation. I don’t know the specifics, and I haven’t seen the affidavit, nor do I want to, but from what you’re telling me, it’s plausible that all of that would’ve been in the affidavit.”

An image from a Globe and Mail profile on key players in Trudeau’s office, with points of interest for this story annotated in red lines by The Bureau.

The Bureau:

Lawyers seemed to focus on the Van Weenen list and the chief of staff’s unprecedented interest in it. This points to concerns that people on the list could have been quietly alerted to be cautious, doesn’t it?

Alan Treddenick:

“Exactly. That 54 days provided an unprecedented window. Why would it have taken that long? Blair’s chief of staff is no dummy—she’s savvy and has likely seen other applications with Van Weenen lists that didn’t raise issues. This one took 54 days before Blair signed it. So what happened in that time? I suspect there was damage control behind the scenes.”

The Bureau:

What would you say to the layperson who sees this as potential obstruction? Even The Globe and Mail wrote that time was passing with an election approaching in September 2021.

Alan Treddenick:

“Regardless of the election, the 54-day period needs examination from a criminal point of view: obstruction, breach of trust, and possibly infractions of the Security of Information Act. From a criminal perspective, that’s one aspect—but from an intelligence perspective, the last thing we as an intelligence service would have wanted was for the people on the Van Weenen list to be advised that Target X is under surveillance. If they were warned to ‘be careful with your communications,’ it would likely result in a change in behavior, which could compromise our operations.

That’s why it’s very troubling to me that the 54-day window hasn’t been examined. Start with a criminal investigation: conduct interviews with everyone on the Van Weenen list and anyone who had access to the document from the moment it entered the minister’s office. Obtain judicial production orders for all communications to and from the minister’s office and staff, and track where they went. Look for any connections to individuals on the Van Weenen list—I suspect there will be, especially since the list likely included some prominent individuals.

If there was communication between someone on the list and the minister’s office, or a staff member, shortly after the chief of staff raised concerns about the Van Weenen list, that would raise a red flag. I’d then dig deeper into the nature of that communication. Did the communication or behavior of one person toward another change? If it did, it would suggest that someone on the list was warned.”

An image from a Globe and Mail profile on key players in Trudeau’s office, with points of interest for this story annotated in red lines by The Bureau.

The Bureau:

You mentioned production orders. Should those apply here to track communications behind the scenes?

Alan Treddenick:

“Absolutely. Production orders for all electronic communications to and from the minister’s office are essential. I’d focus on links between those communications and people on the Van Weenen list.”

The Bureau:

I have said this seems like a Watergate-type inquiry. Would you agree that the level of investigative diligence here should be that high?

Alan Treddenick:

“Yes. Given the lapses in memory and conflicting testimonies—differences in how testimony from Marco Mendicino (Blair’s successor) treated applications versus Blair’s office—there should be a criminal investigation into this period.”

The Bureau:

Any final thoughts?

Alan Treddenick:

“I think your reporting and that of a few others has been essential. It’s unfortunate that leaks were necessary to expose this—but they were. In the inquiry, I saw bureaucratic machinery in its best—or actually worst—form.”

Editor’s note: Alan Treddenick, former senior counter-terror officer for CSIS, also worked for Blackberry on national security matters after retiring.

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An image from a Globe and Mail profile on key players in Trudeau’s office, with points of interest for this story annotated in red lines by The Bureau.

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espionage

Communist China interfered in BC election that saw far-left NDP re-elected by slim margin: report

Published on November 16, 2024

Todayville

B.C. NDP Premier David Eby

From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

Investigative journalist Sam Cooper has gone on the record to state, ‘In my journalistic assessment, assisted by Mandarin OSINT specialists, there evidently has been significant CCP-affiliated Election Interference in support of Premier David Eby.’

Canadian investigative reporter Sam Cooper says his research has led him to conclude there was “significant” interference by groups linked to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in the recent provincial election of British Columbia, which saw the New Democratic Party under Premier David Eby win re-election by a tiny margin.

“In my journalistic assessment, assisted by Mandarin OSINT specialists, there evidently has been significant CCP-affiliated Election Interference in support of Premier David Eby,” wrote investigative journalist Sam Cooper on X last week.

As reported by LifeSiteNews, Eby’s NDP squeaked out the smallest possible majority government last month in the province’s elections, beating out his up-and-coming Conservative rival John Rustad. The results from the election took weeks to finalize after multiple recounts, as well as reports of ballots going uncounted.

Cooper, who works for The Bureau, then linked to his report, which he said, “collects documents from China and Canada.”

According to Cooper, in 2021, then Attorney General of British Columbia, David Eby, who later became head of the B.C. NDP and premier of the province, approved a $20,000 grant to the “Canada Committee 100 Society (CCS100), a community organization led by Ding Guo, a prominent journalist from Shanghai.”

The grant has now come under intense scrutiny, reports Cooper, from “experts and diaspora citizens due to the group’s documented links to Beijing’s United Front and political donors involved in Eby’s 2022 NDP leadership campaign.”

At the time, a government press release stated that Ding was a personal friend and advisor to Eby.

Ding stated that the project “will help us gather detailed, relevant data on a wide scale. It will also provide opportunities for the Chinese Canadian community, including new immigrants, to engage in the legislative process.”

Of late, Cooper has been instrumental in shedding light on the potential extent of interference from CCP-linked groups in Canada’s most recent elections.

As noted by LifeSiteNews earlier this week, Cooper recently reported that the CCP boasted it had successfully managed to get no less than eight of some 41 preferred candidates elected in Canada’s 2019 federal election.

LifeSiteNews also recently reported about Cooper’s naming of four politicians along with one government advisor as allegedly being involved in a scheme backed by the CCP to purposely interfere in Canada’s electoral process.  

In light of multiple accusations of foreign meddling in Canadian elections, a federal Foreign Interference Commission was convened earlier this year to “examine and assess the interference by China, Russia, and other foreign states or non-state actors, including any potential impacts, to confirm the integrity of, and any impacts on, the 43rd and 44th general elections (2019 and 2021 elections) at the national and electoral district levels.” 

The commission is headed by Justice Marie-Josée Hogue, who had earlier said she and her lawyers will remain “impartial” and will not be influenced by politics. In January, Hogue said that she would “uncover the truth whatever it may be.” 

A few months ago, the head of Canada’s intelligence agency testified under oath that he gave Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who in the past has said he has an affinity for China’s “basic dictatorship,” multiple warnings that agents of the CCP were going after Conservative MPs, yet the prime minister has denied receiving these warnings. 