Our southern border is a major national security risk that must be covered in prayer.

From the Federalist. 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.

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Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., ranking member of the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security, penned the request to subcommittee Chair Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, in part on grounds that “There is no known case in which a foreign national who pinged on a terror watch list was simply released on his own recognizance. The facts in the case strongly suggest that the Biden Administration failed to follow appropriate protocols with respect to suspected terrorists….”

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….”

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….

But Bazzi was not in custody for that to happen. Something so far off the grid as to defy belief happened instead. ICE headquarters in Washington D.C. ordered Bazzi released into the United States on his own recognizance to pursue an asylum claim in Michigan, where he had family, according to the DHS documents.

This order came in defiance of the FBI’s recommendation. The reason? Bazzi was claimed to be at heightened risk from Covid-19 in the detention center due to a “Chronic Care Condition – Overweight,” the leaked DHS documents said….

Even Deeper Causes for Concern

According to the documents, U.S. authorities had denied Bazzi a tourist visa in 2019 to visit relatives in the Detroit area. His FBI terrorism watch list status was cited for declining him. Those systems worked in keeping him out of the country….

Instead of the outcome for Bazzi’s tourist visa application, Bazzi’s illegal border crossing has him living free on his own recognizance pending the outcome of an asylum case that, also because of the border, will allow him total freedom for years because of a vastly expanded immigration court backlog….

Mexico Also Released a Yemeni Terror Suspect

According to other government documents leaked to me, Mexican immigration in April 2021 caught a Yemeni just as he was about to cross into Del Rio, Texas. At that early stage of the mass migration crisis, collaborative protocols with the Americans, as I also report in “America’s Covert Border War,” seemed to be working. Notified, the Americans would have run the name and fingerprints through databases and gotten the FBI watch list hit; Yemeni national Ahmed Mohammed Ahmed was a “Category 5” member of a terrorist organization.

The Mexicans tried to deport Ahmed to Yemen. It didn’t work out. An American law enforcement intelligence source told me the Mexican intelligence officers prematurely left him at a European transit airport and returned to Mexico. Ahmed abandoned his connecting flight and returned to Mexico, too. The Mexicans caught him again in July 2021, preparing to cross into Del Rio.

By then, Mexico was struggling to manage historic numbers of migrants. They kept him for five months. But instead of deporting him this time, Mexico let Ahmed go free, an act the Americans would never have previously agreed to….

Serious Action Needed, Stat

President Biden barely mentioned the southern border in his March 1 State of the Union speech. Biggs needled him on Twitter at one point during the border part of the speech, expressing frustration: “You released a suspected terrorist from ICE custody so he wouldn’t catch COVID,” Biggs tweeted….

How are you praying for our borders?

(Excerpt from The Federalist. Photo Credit: Naqi Shahid on Unsplash)