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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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2025 Federal Election

Liberal MP resigns after promoting Chinese government bounty on Conservative rival

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From LifeSiteNews

By Clare Marie Merkowsky

“I find it incredible that Mark Carney would allow someone to run for his party that called for a Canadian citizen to be handed over to a foreign government on a bounty,” he said at a recent rally. “What does that say about whether Mark Carney would protect Canadians?”

Liberal MP candidate Paul Chiang has dropped out of the running after being exposed for suggesting Canadians turn in a Conservative Party candidate to the Chinese consulate to collect a bounty placed on the man by the communist regime.

In an March 31 statement, Chiang, the Liberal candidate for the Markham-Unionville riding, announced his departure from the race after a video of him suggesting a bounty could be claimed for Conservative candidate Joe Tay by handing him over to Chinese authorities circulated on social media. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police have announced they are “probing” the comments.

“I am proud of what we have achieved together and I remain deeply grateful for the trust placed in me,” he said. “This is a uniquely important election with so much at stake for Canadians. As the Prime Minister and Team Canada work to stand up to President Trump and protect our economy, I do not want any distractions in this critical moment.”

 

“That’s why I’m standing aside as our 2025 candidate in our community of Markham-Unionville,” he announced.

Chiang’s resignation follows backlash from Conservatives and Canadians alike when a January video from a news conference with Chinese-language media in Toronto resurfaced.

In the video, Chiang jokingly suggested that Tay, his then-Conservative rival for the Markham–Unionville riding, could be turned over to the Chinese Consulate General in Toronto in return for $1-million Hong Kong dollar bounty, about $183,000 CAD.

 

Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre was quick to call out Chiang’s suggestion and blasted Prime Minister Mark Carney for keeping him on the ballot.

Chiang has since apologized for his suggestion on both social media and personally to Tay.

“Today, I spoke with Joseph Tay, the Conservative candidate for Don Valley North, to personally apologize for the comments that I made this past January,” he wrote in a March 30 X post.

 

“It was a terrible lapse of judgement. I recognize the severity of the statement and I am deeply disappointed in myself,” he continued.

Carney has said remarkably little regarding the situation. First, he refused to fire the Liberal candidate, referring to Chiang’s statement as a “terrible lapse of judgment.”

“He’s made his apology. He’s made it to the public, he’s made it to the individual concerned, he’s made it directly to me, and he’s going to continue with his candidacy,” Carney said. “He has my confidence.”

Then, following the announcement of Chaing’s resignation, Carney told reporters that it was time to “move on” and that he would “leave it at that.”

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2025 Federal Election

‘Coordinated and Alarming’: Allegations of Chinese Voter Suppression in 2021 Race That Flipped Toronto Riding to Liberals and Paul Chiang

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“There were Chinese officials following Bob Saroya around.” The Bureau investigates claims of voter intimidation in the Toronto-area riding now at the centre of Canada’s election.

As Canada’s snap election unfolds under the shadow of foreign interference—following the resignation of a Liberal MP accused of suggesting his Conservative rival could be handed to Chinese officials for a bounty—The Bureau has uncovered new allegations that Chinese agents attempted to intimidate voters and the Conservative incumbent in the same Markham–Unionville riding during the 2021 federal campaign. The revelations raise urgent concerns that similar tactics may be resurfacing in Toronto-area ridings with large communities of immigrants from China and Hong Kong.

Paul Chiang, a former police officer who unseated longtime Conservative representative Bob Saroya to win Markham–Unionville for Team Trudeau in 2021, stepped down as a candidate late Monday after the RCMP confirmed it was reviewing remarks he made to Chinese-language media in January. During that event, Chiang reportedly said Conservative candidate Joe Tay—a Canadian citizen wanted under Hong Kong’s National Security Law—could be taken to the Chinese Consulate in Toronto to claim a bounty.

Tay, a former Hong Kong broadcaster whose independent reporting from Canada has drawn retaliation from Beijing, rejected Chiang’s apology, calling his comments to Chinese-language journalists “the tradecraft of the Chinese Communist Party.” He added: “They are not just aimed at me; they are intended to send a chilling signal to the entire community to force compliance with Beijing’s political goals.” His concerns were echoed by dozens of NGOs and human rights organizations, which condemned Chiang’s remarks as an endorsement of transnational repression.

There is no indication Chiang was aware of the intimidation campaign alleged by senior Conservative sources during the 2021 vote. He has described his January remarks as an ill-considered joke, a serious lapse in judgment, and emphasized that he intended no harm or wrongdoing.

According to multiple senior figures from Erin O’Toole’s 2021 Conservative campaign—who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of intelligence disclosures—O’Toole’s team was briefed by Canadian intelligence that Chinese officials were actively surveilling Saroya during the election. One source recalled being told that “there were Chinese officials following Bob Saroya around,” and that “CSIS literally said repeatedly that this was ‘coordinated and alarming.’”

“Bob lost because the Chinese vote abandoned him,” the source added.

When asked to respond, O’Toole—who stepped down after the 2021 loss—acknowledged awareness of voter intimidation reports but did not say whether CSIS had informed his team about alleged Chinese surveillance targeting Saroya.

“Our candidate Bob Saroya was a hardworking MP who won against the Liberal wave in 2015,” O’Toole wrote. “He won in 2019 as well, but thousands of votes from the Chinese Canadian community stayed home in 2021. We heard reports of intimidation of voters. We also know the Consul General from China took particular interest in the riding and made strange comments to Mr. Saroya ahead of the election. It was always in the top three of the eight or nine ridings that I believe were flipped due to foreign interference. The conduct of Mr. Chiang suggests our serious concerns were warranted.”

A third senior Conservative campaign source confirmed Chinese interference was a concern in multiple ridings. “The concern was related to China… we had candidates that were being intimidated,” the source said.

Speaking specifically to Saroya’s campaign, the source said that in the early stages of the 2021 election, Saroya and a close family member believed they were performing well. “He said he had never had such a good reaction at the doors, and he assumed he was getting the Chinese traditional vote,” they recalled.

But the campaign later learned from CSIS that Saroya was allegedly being followed by suspected Chinese security personnel. Intelligence assessments reportedly indicated that these actors were shadowing Saroya’s canvassing team and visiting the same homes shortly after campaign stops. While The Bureau has not confirmed CSIS’s exact conclusions, the conduct appears consistent with voter suppression tactics—paralleling public warnings issued this week by Canada’s SITE Task Force.

The source added that CSIS interviewed Saroya. “He was convinced he was being tailed at times,” they said. The Bureau has independently confirmed with two sources that Saroya was interviewed by CSIS.

Saroya has declined to comment.

While Saroya is not named among alleged victims, a January 2022 “Special Report” from the Privy Council Office—sourced from over 100 CSIS documents and reviewed by The Bureau—stated that a small number of MPs in 2021 reported concerns for their families, reputations, privacy, and re-election chances due to “targeted” CCP activity.

Another section of the report details threats and coercion strongly resembling the emerging picture in Markham. It stated that Chinese diplomats, public security officers, and intelligence officers had monitored Canadians, including one case in which agents threatened the parents of a student in Canada.

The Privy Council Office report also suggested that concerns about forced repatriations—or even covert renditions—of dissidents are plausible. It noted that in 2020, a Chinese police liaison worked with a Canadian law enforcement officer to repatriate an economic fugitive in the Fox Hunt campaign. Another coerced repatriation involved Chinese police bringing a fugitive’s brother and father to Canada, and the relatives could not return to China unless the fugitive returned with them.

The report also noted that “Chinese intelligence officers have discussed that Canadians can be ‘messed with’ in person and online because they are critical of China.”

Although SITE officials have not directly addressed Joe Tay’s statement that he contacted the RCMP for protection in relation to his candidacy, they acknowledged under repeated questioning from Canadian reporters Monday that the spread of Chiang’s comments through Chinese-language media fits a broader pattern of foreign interference aimed at silencing dissidents and influencing voters.

In a public statement, a SITE official said the task force is aware of ongoing efforts by authoritarian regimes to target dissidents, critics, journalists, and other members of diaspora communities. “Please remember two things. First, your vote is secret and secure—it will not be possible to find out who you vote for. And second, it is an offense to threaten someone so that they change their vote,” the official said Monday.

Canadians experiencing intimidation or threats were urged to write down the details—such as the person, location, and nature of the event—and report to local police or contact the RCMP National Security Information Network.

Though Saroya has not spoken publicly about the matter—despite repeated interview requests from The Bureau—parliamentary testimony suggests he raised his concerns within Conservative leadership. During a 2023 hearing of the House Procedure and Affairs Committee, Conservative MP Michael Cooper asked Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Chief of Staff, Katie Telford:

“Ten weeks before the 2021 election, Bob Saroya, then member of Parliament for Markham–Unionville, received a cryptic and threatening text message from Beijing’s Consul General in Toronto, suggesting that he would no longer be a member of Parliament after the 2021 election. Were you, the Prime Minister or anyone in the PMO briefed or otherwise have knowledge about that text message?”

Telford replied: “I can’t speak to that information.”

Meanwhile, a review of September 2021 campaign materials shows at least one controversial appearance in Markham featuring Paul Chiang, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and then–Public Safety Minister Bill Blair.

In a Facebook post, Chiang wrote: “Today I hosted Justin Trudeau here in Markham–Unionville. It’s time for Erin O’Toole to come clean with Canadians, and for Bob Saroya to do the same. Their commitment to re-legalize 1,500 models of assault-style firearms will put the safety of our community at risk.”

That message echoed attack ads against O’Toole displayed on a digital screen inside a Chinese grocery store in Toronto’s Scarborough–Agincourt riding, according to evidence presented at the Hogue Commission.

Even after Chiang’s resignation, Prime Minister Mark Carney has faced renewed scrutiny for expressing confidence in him just hours before the RCMP announced its investigation. Carney characterized the controversy as a “teachable moment.”

Dennis Molinaro, a former national security analyst and author of the forthcoming book Under Siege: Interference and Espionage in China’s Secret War Against Canada, criticized Carney’s handling of the issue.

“The threats the community faces are real and longstanding,” Molinaro said. “Carney’s reference to Chiang as a former police officer—as if that’s a valid reason for him to remain in the race—is ludicrous.”

“Carney has continually said next to nothing on China,” he added. “It’s one of the most significant political and geopolitical issues of our time, and he has nothing to say? Why? China is a major concern for the United States, and yet he remains silent—even after the execution of four Canadians?”

The Durham Regional Police Association—which represents officers in one of the three Ontario forces where Chiang served—issued a statement condemning Carney’s actions. “We are disappointed in the clear lack of integrity and leadership displayed by Mark Carney to stand by this candidate rather than act after such egregious actions,” the association wrote, adding that Chiang’s conduct “would be held to a higher standard for an active officer in Ontario.”

The group also rejected Carney’s defense of Chiang’s law enforcement background: “The fact that Mr. Carney used Chiang’s policing career as a shield for his actions undermines the great work our heroes in uniform do in their communities each and every day.”

Chiang’s policing career spanned nearly 30 years. He began with the London Police Service in 1992, later served with the Durham Regional Police, and retired in 2020 as a sergeant with York Regional Police. In 2013, he worked as a diversity officer in York’s Diversity and Cultural Resources Unit.

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