Biden’s Handlers Release Suspected Terrorist into U.S. after He Illegally Crosses the Border

A viciously anti-American administration that cares nothing for the safety and well-being of its own people.

The Biden Admin Released A Suspected Terrorist Into The United States After He Illegally Crossed The Border

by Todd Bensman, The Federalist, March 4, 2022 (thanks to Henry):

AUSTIN, Texas –On Feb. 16, Republican Congress members asked House Democrats for permission to hold a hearing about a decision to release a suspected Islamist terrorist who in November swam the Rio Grande into Texas….

The case of Lebanon-born Venezuelan Issam Bazzi’s release into the American interior is just the latest such incident that raises serious questions. Chief among them is whether the historic mass-migration crisis at the U.S. southern border has seriously degraded national security.

How This Terrorist Suspect Was Set Free

Bazzi was among a swell of Venezuelans who began crossing the Rio Grande in escalating numbers last November on word that the United States was handing out free passes into the interior. Some 25,000 turned themselves in at the border in December and another 22,000 did in January. According to leaked Department of Homeland Security documents in my possession, Bazzi flew with his wife and daughter to Monterrey, Mexico, in early November, then swam the river into Brownsville, Texas.

His name and fingerprints flagged him as on the FBI’s terrorism watch list, so a mistaken identity is unlikely. In the lexicon of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Bazzi is described in the documents as a “Category 5 group member,” which can mean not considered armed and dangerous. But one of the government documents noted Bazzi’s file “contains substantive high side derogatory information.”

As I explain in my book, “America’s Covert Border War,” danger level is irrelevant for what is supposed to happen with any border-crossing terrorist group member on the FBI’s watch list. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services website notes that “generally, any individual who is a member of a ‘terrorist organization’ … is ‘inadmissible and is ineligible for most immigration benefits.”

FBI agents operating in line with established post-9/11 protocols interrogate watch-listed migrants and others from countries of national security interest who cross the southern border and end up in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention centers. That happened when Bazzi was flagged as a suspected terrorist in Brownsville, Texas, after his crossing. But then the process went off the rails.

After interviewing Bazzi, the FBI cited “highly derogatory information” in deciding he was a flight risk and recommended ICE keep the 50-year-old Venezuelan in custody. Typically, migrants suspected of terrorism are deported to their home countries, even if they have no “highly derogatory” intelligence information on their records and don’t pose a flight risk, as the FBI said of Bazzi.