CHILLING Statistic: How Many Terrorists Try to Enter the U.S. Every Day?

At a roundtable discussion with Customs and Border Protection this week, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen mentioned, chillingly, that a stunning number of terrorists try to get into the United States every single day.

“As you heard on the watch floor, we have about 70 terrorists a day that we see trying to get here through some method of transportation. That’s 500 a week, 2,000 a year. So needless to say, these men and women are very busy every day watching, not just cargo, but passengers and other sorts of traffic,” Nielsen said.

Nielsen’s comments were part of a larger roundtable discussion where members of the Homeland Security team expressed to President Donald Trump how essential it was for CPB to get more funding and better border security. Acting Commissioner Kevin McAleenan said that while he was pleased to see the drop in border crossings that characterized the first few months of the Trump administration, things were on the uptick – and not in a good way.

“The numbers that you see here, sir, you can see the arrests at the border of people trying to cross illegally; they dropped dramatically early in your administration after your Inauguration,” McAleenan said. “The intelligence and interviews we’ve conducted indicate that that was because concern that the enforcement posture had changed at the border under your leadership.

“As you can see, we had a low of about 10,000 back in April of this year, but we’ve started to see the numbers come up each month, and especially in two significant portions of this population: family units and unaccompanied children,” McAleenan continued.

McAleenan emphasized that not only did this put the U.S. at greater risk for a terrorist attack but it also opened the door for an enormous increase in drug trafficking. Simultaneously (and not unrelated): Attacks on Customs and Border Patrol agents have surged 45%.

When the president asked why, McAleenan explained, “Well, we think there’s two reasons. One, we’ve got this increase in narcotics. We’ve gotten more effective at securing our border, and so we’re dealing with a more determined, a more sophisticated, and a more dangerous population with these smugglers crossing, at the same time as we’re seeing this increased flow of families and unaccompanied children.

“So we really believe these dual trends require investments both in smart border security, like a border wall system, but also closing the legal loopholes that we face in our immigration laws,” he continued.

These figures need to be front and center in the president’s mind – and the collective mind of the American public – as Congress considers solutions for the Dreamers. It’s beyond time to secure our border and keep unwanted illegals out of our country. Trump promised he would do it and this country is counting on him to make it happen.