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Great Reset

Terrorists Welcome: Chronic counterterrorism lapses at the border demand investigation

Published

9 months ago

9 minute read

Published April 22, 2024 by the Claremont Institute’s The American Mind

Author: Todd Bensman

The latest release into the American interior of an FBI terrorist suspect who illegally crossed the U.S.-Mexico border—a twice-freed Afghan national man free to roam America for 11 months until his capture—demands that the federal government regard this patterned problem as a chronic national security emergency requiring elevation to the highest priority within the intelligence community, federal law enforcement, and Congress.

The case of the 48-year-old Mohammad Kharwin, whom an overwhelmed Border Patrol freed into America on March 10, 2023 before agents could confirm the FBI watch list hit that initially flagged him and whom a swamped Texas immigration court freed a second time in February, is the seventh example of its kind that can establish, just from disparate public records, a mortally dangerous failure pattern.

More cases of accidental Border Patrol releases of illegally crossing terrorism suspects, who did not reach the public record, are highly likely if not certain.

But this latest miss-and-release propels the problem well beyond the critical mass threshold justifying coordinated high-priority government intervention, even if Congress must politically force it, before the next one—or those still roaming the country lost to authorities even now—needlessly kill and maim Americans.

By current public accounts, an initial Border Patrol database check flagged Kharwin for membership in Hezb-e-Islami, which the U.S. Director of National Intelligence describes as a “virulently anti-Western insurgent group,” when he illegally crossed the California border in March 2023. He was among 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, D.C. waved him through like millions of other illegal crossers on “Alternatives to Detention” (ATD) personal recognizance papers, where they 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; that’s 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, Texas, 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 U.S.” 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.

An Established New National Security Threat Pattern

Terrorism threat border lights have been blinking red for some time now in a non-specific way, especially since the U.S. 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 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 75 so far in fiscal 2024.

Through March 2024, Border Patrol caught 342 while partnered federal agencies like the FBI and ICE intelligence presumably investigated and dealt with each. That they did so is less a good national security story 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), more suspected terrorists on the FBI watch list are almost certainly among them.

But 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.

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

In September 2023, for instance, I testified before the U.S. House Subcommittee on the Judiciary about the accidental releases I knew about at the time. Mine was indeed a rare warning that named the accidental-release problem 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, caused a spate of accidental terror suspect releases, and elevated the threat of terror attack as a result.

The Biden Administration’s own 2024 Homeland Threat Assessment warns, with far less specificity, 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.”

With even less specificity, in his latest testimony to Congress 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 like Kharwin’s and the ones I told the subcommittee about remain 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.

Case Candidates for Investigation

To date, only one federal investigation has produced a public report branding the problem, remarkable but forgotten or given short shrift by major U.S. news media, although I did write about it. That eye-opening document was the Department of Homeland Security’s 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:

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Censorship Industrial Complex

WEF ranks ‘disinformation’ as greater threat to world stability than ‘armed conflict’

Published on January 21, 2025

By

From LifeSiteNews

By Tim Hinchliffe

Misinformation and disinformation, along with societal polarization, are catalysts that amplify all other global risks, including armed conflict and climate change, according to the World Economic Forum (WEF).

On Wednesday, the WEF published its annual Global Risks Report with very few changes from last year’s edition.

For the second year in a row, the number one global risk over the next two years is misinformation and disinformation, which have cascading effects on other leading risks, according to the WEF “Global Risks Report 2025”:

Similar to last year, Misinformation and disinformation and Societal polarization remain key current risks […] The high rankings of these two risks is not surprising considering the accelerating spread of false or misleading information, which amplifies the other leading risks we face, from State-based armed conflict to Extreme weather events

According to the Global Risks 2025 report, polarization “continues to fan the flames of misinformation and disinformation, which, for the second year running, is the top-ranked short- to medium-term concern across all risk categories.”

“Efforts to combat this risk are coming up against a formidable opponent in Generative AI-created false or misleading content that can be produced and distributed at scale,” which was the same assessment given in the 2024 report.

Apart from inflation and economic downturn, there isn’t much of a difference in global risks between 2024 and 2025.

Compare the top 10 short-term and long-term global risks from 2024 with those for 2025 in the images below.

WEF Top 10 Global Risks 2025

WEF Top 10 Global Risks 2024

Rising use of digital platforms and a growing volume of AI-generated content are making divisive misinformation and disinformation more ubiquitous. — WEF Global Risks Report 2025

The Global Risks Report 2025 says that misinformation, coupled with algorithmic bias, leads to a situation where you and I should accept giving up some of our privacy for convenience, which subsequently makes it easier for us to be monitored and controlled:

Despite the dangers related to false or misleading content, and the associated risks of algorithmic bias, citizens need to strike a balance between privacy on one hand and increased online personalization and convenience on the other hand.

While data governance and regulation vary worldwide, it is becoming easier for citizens to be monitored, enabling governments, technology companies and threat actors to reach deeper into people’s lives.

Those with access to rising computing power and the ability to leverage sophisticated AI/GenAI models could, if they choose to, exploit further the vulnerabilities provided by citizens’ online footprints.

What else can we blame on misinformation?

I know! Climate change:

The accelerating spread of false or misleading information […] amplifies the other leading risks we face, from State-based armed conflict to Extreme weather events.

WEF Global Risks 2025

While the term “climate change” is mentioned several times in the Global Risks Report 2025, it does not appear anywhere in the actual list of 33 global risks.

Instead of using the term “climate change,” the full list of global risks uses several climate-adjacent terms, such as:

  • Extreme weather events
  • Pollution
  • Critical change to Earth systems
  • Natural resource shortages
  • Biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse
  • Involuntary migration or displacement

The unelected globalists are now lumping terms like the ones above to push their climate policies and agendas, and they even go so far as to claim that misinformation amplifies extreme weather events, which actually might be true, just not in the way they imagined:

For example, on Tuesday WEF president and CEO Børge Brende blamed the California fires, which we may consider to be examples of extreme weather events or biodiversity loss, to climate change while not addressing how the state cut funding to fight fires, how the Los Angeles fire chief said the city failed her agency, or the role of arsonists.

By blaming the fires on just climate change while ignoring the rest, could Brende himself be engaging in disinformation?

Climate change is also an underlying driver of several other risks that rank high. For example, Involuntary migration or displacement is a leading concern. — WEF Global Risks Report 2025

The WEF Global Risks Report 2025 lumps many global risks together with the belief that they are all interconnected.

For example, it says that misinformation and polarization amplify armed conflict, extreme weather events, involuntary migration or displacement, and all the risks in-between.

It’s the same tactic the unelected globalists use when they conflate misinformation and disinformation with hate speech, so they can use one as an excuse to go after the other.

For the WEF and partners, global problems require global solutions with global governance through public-private partnerships – the merger of corporation and state, which is also known as fascism or corporatism.

In the end, the global risks report is just a survey, and the risks may or may not materialize.

In January 2023, the WEF announced the results of a survey of cyber leaders that said a “catastrophic cyber event” was likely to occur within the next two years.

Here we are exactly two years later and that never happened.

For the unelected globalists, misinformation and disinformation are words they throw out to try to crush narratives that don’t align with their own, and they will use any threat, whether real or perceived, to advance their agendas and policies.

Reprinted with permission from The Sociable.

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DEI

Trump signs executive order banning men from women’s prisons, gender-confused troops in military

Published on January 21, 2025

By

From LifeSiteNews

By Matt Lamb

“I will end the government policy to socially engineer race and gender into every aspect of public and private life”

President Donald Trump rescinded an executive order that allowed gender-confused people to join the military.

Trump rescinded 78 of former President Joe Biden’s executive orders, including a handful that pushed the LGBT agenda. The decision drew praise from conservative groups.

One of the rescinded Biden directives is “Executive Order 14004 of January 25, 2021 (Enabling All Qualified Americans To Serve Their Country in Uniform),” according to the White House website.

The Biden order made it “the policy of the United States to ensure that all [so-called] transgender individuals who wish to serve in the United States military and can meet the appropriate standards shall be able to do so openly” and without alleged “discrimination.”

It revoked President Trump’s first-term decision to prohibit gender-confused individuals from enlisting in the military.

Trump also rescinded other Biden orders on transgenderism and homosexuality, including several relating to “gender identity” and “sexual orientation.”

The president also made it a policy of the United States that there are only two sexes, male and female. “I will end the government policy to socially engineer race and gender into every aspect of public and private life,” Trump promised during his inauguration speech, as reported by LifeSiteNews.

Trump fulfilled that promise on Day One, with an executive order titled “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.”

Efforts to eradicate the biological reality of sex fundamentally attack women by depriving them of their dignity, safety, and well-being. The erasure of sex in language and policy has a corrosive impact not just on women but on the validity of the entire American system. Basing Federal policy on truth is critical to scientific inquiry, public safety, morale, and trust in government itself.

Accordingly, my Administration will defend women’s rights and protect freedom of conscience by using clear and accurate language and policies that recognize women are biologically female, and men are biologically male.

The executive order also affirms that sex is immutable.

It also took aim at the Supreme Court’s Bostock v. Clayton County decision. This decision, authored by Justice Neil Gorsuch, read into federal law a “right” to cross-dress at work. Trump said the decision should not be used to eradicate single-sex spaces, such as in education and prisons. Transgender activists have tried to use it to block laws against  drugs and surgeries and used it to sue a Catholic hospital for not removing a gender-confused woman’s healthy uterus.

The executive order also rescinded various guidance documents and letters promoting Transgender ideology.

The order also states:

Agencies shall remove all statements, policies, regulations, forms, communications, or other internal and external messages that promote or otherwise inculcate gender ideology, and shall cease issuing such statements, policies, regulations, forms, communications or other messages. Agency forms that require an individual’s sex shall list male or female, and shall not request gender identity. Agencies shall take all necessary steps, as permitted by law, to end the Federal funding of gender ideology.

Conservatives praise Trump’s support for biological reality

Trump’s swift action to uphold the two sexes and to ensure women are not housed in prisons or have to share locker rooms with men drew praise from conservative groups.

“Today, President Donald Trump has begun the effort of restoring our nation to the principles that made it great. He’s off to an excellent start,” American Principles Project President Terry Schilling stated in a news release.

“With the hundreds of executive orders signed today, President Trump has taken important steps to eliminate gender ideology and DEI from our government, depoliticize our military and justice system, and reinstitute protections for free speech and religious liberty,” Schilling stated.

The president “has made clear he understands and is prepared for the task ahead,” Schilling said, noting there is more work to be done. “We look forward to working with the incoming administration to ensure the president is able to deliver on his ambitious, pro-family agenda.”

Christian legal nonprofit Alliance Defending Freedom also celebrated the sex definition order, calling it “momentous” and a return to “reality and common sense.”

‘The fight against gender ideology is far from over, and Alliance Defending Freedom is committed to seeing it through to the end,” CEO Kristen Waggoner stated in a news release. “But today, the U.S. government switched sides in that conflict—from promoting the lie to defending the truth.”

She said ADF plans to work with Trump to “restore common sense in American policy.”

Independent Women’s Forum also thanked President Trump for ensuring biological reality is recognized in law.

“The lie that sex is fluid erases and endangers women,” senior legal advisor Beth Parlato stated.

She also said Trump is “bring[ing] back sanity and common sense.”

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