Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) is slamming President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for “protecting the identity” of illegal aliens on the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Terrorist Watch List.
“I write about troubling reports that the Department of Homeland Security is refusing to disclose the nationalities of FBI terror watchlist suspects who illegally crossed the southern border,” Cotton writes to DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
As Cotton notes, Fox News filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request in October 2023 asking DHS for the nationalities of those illegal aliens who had crossed the border since January 2021 and who were subsequently found on the Terrorist Watch List.
In response to the request, DHS responded that the agency is “committed to protecting the identity of individuals” on the Terror Watch List and that making public such information is an “invasion of personal privacy.”
“[DHS] asserted that the ‘privacy interests’ of illegal-alien terrorists ‘far outweigh whatever public interest, if any, exists in having their information released,’” Cotton writes:
Your letter also dubiously claimed that terrorist organizations could exploit nationality information by “infer[ring] a large percentage of its operatives from a particular nationality” raise fewer terrorism red flags. Of course, if the Biden-Harris administration impartially enforced our laws and deported illegal aliens regardless of their origin, terrorists wouldn’t be able to game the system in the manner you describe. [Emphasis added]
I suspect that the real reason you’re unlawfully withholding this information about terror suspects’ nationalities isn’t due to privacy or security concerns, but rather partisan concerns that it would alarm the American people. Once again, you’re attempting to hide evidence of the Biden-Harris administration’s border crisis. [Emphasis added]
But the American people have a right to know who is crossing our border, especially when those illegal aliens have ties to terrorism. And that right, contrary to your bizarre assertion, “far outweighs” the privacy rights of illegal aliens suspected of terrorism. Honestly, I can’t believe I even have to write that sentence. [Emphasis added]
Cotton is asking Mayorkas to produce the nationalities of illegal aliens on the Terrorist Watch List to his Senate office by September 10.
As of July, Biden and Harris’s DHS has overseen the arrival at the southern border of nearly 400 illegal aliens on the Terrorist Watch List since early January 2021.
A recent bombshell report from the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security, and Enforcement revealed that the Biden-Harris administration “has released into American communities at least 99, with at least 34 others in DHS custody but not yet removed from the United States.”
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.