Republicans pulverize Biden for admitting suspected ISIS terrorists at border

Senate Republicans have erupted with fury at reports that the Biden administration released eight suspected ISIS terrorists into the United States after they came over the southern border.

Federal lawmakers erupted on social media at a New York Post report that revealed federal law enforcement had carried out a sting operation in three cities over the weekend that resulted in the arrests of illegal immigrants with confirmed ties to the Islamic State .

The suspects were encountered at the southern border and released into the country. Federal authorities did not realize until after their release in 2023 that they posed a serious national security threat despite the Biden administration's assurances that all immigrants arrested were adequately screened and vetted before being let into the country.

"The only thing more shocking than @JoeBiden's open border is that we have not had a terror attack on our soil yet," Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT) said in a post to X on Wednesday afternoon.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) echoed Daines's sentiment and called the revelation unsurprising given the border crisis, which began when Biden took office in early 2021.

"I am not shocked this happened — we’ve seen this coming from a mile away. For over a year, I’ve been saying this is the most susceptible America has been to a terrorist attack since 9/11/01," Cruz said. "This is a direct result of Joe Biden’s border policies."

Federal officers from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested six immigrants during busts in Los Angeles, New York City, and Philadelphia. Authorities wiretapped individuals and recorded a conversation about making bombs, according to the New York Post.

In fiscal 2023, which ended in September last year, the Border Patrol caught more than 172 known or suspected terrorists illegally entering the U.S. from Mexico or Canada.

The figure is a far cry from single-digit terrorist watch list numbers seen throughout the Trump administration. The dramatic increase to double and now triple digits over the past several years has especially drawn concern from Democratic and Republican lawmakers as violence grows in the Middle East.

FBI Director Christopher Wray testified before the Senate in August 2022 that although there was no “imminent threat from a foreign terrorist organization on the border at the moment,” terrorists were looking for any vulnerability to “exploit.”

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Arizona Senate candidate Kari Lake, a Republican, said on Wednesday that she was particularly concerned about the immigrants taken into custody given their country of origin. The eight individuals reportedly were Russian but had lived in Tajikistan before going to the U.S. border.

"The 8 suspected ISIS terrorists who illegally crossed the wide-open southern border were from Tajikistan," Lake wrote in a post to X. "That’s the same country from which four terrorists crossed the border into Russia & slaughtered 145 concertgoers during the March 22 terrorist attack."