San Diego County Congressman Duncan Hunter is attracting attention locally and nationally for telling Fox News this week that at least 10 fighters for the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria have been apprehended trying to cross into Texas from Mexico.
“The only way that ISIS is going to harm Americans is by coming in through the southern border, which they already have,” Hunter told Fox News host Greta Van Susteren on Tuesday. “If they catch five or 10 of them, then you know there’s going to be dozens more that did not get caught by the Border Patrol.”
Joe Kasper, a spokesman for Hunter, an Alpine Republican, told KPBS in an email that “officials have confirmed the apprehension of foreign nationals with ISIL affiliation ….The border is a vulnerability, bottom line, and this string of apprehensions validates that fact.”
Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson denied Hunter’s claim.
“We have no credible, specific intelligence to that effect,” Johnson said Wednesday on CNN. He said he looks at intelligence reports from overseas and the U.S. southern border “virtually every day, numerous times a day, to be on the lookout for something of that nature.”
The spokeswoman for his agency, Marsha Catron, also told KPBS on Wednesday that Hunter’s claims that individuals with ties to ISIS (also known as ISIL) have been caught at the border with Mexico were “categorically false.”
“Certainly we need to be vigilant, we need to protect our borders,” Kimber said. “But to make that statement, for what purpose I have no idea, when there’s no credible information to back it up, is really reckless.”
Other Republican politicians have also said that ISIS terrorists pose a threat to cross into the U.S. from Mexico. Arkansas Rep. Tom Cotton, who’s running for the U.S. Senate, and Texas Gov. Rick Perry have both warned of the imminent threat of ISIS fighters trying to sneak in through the porous southern border.
Last month, Sheriff Gary Painter of Midland County, Texas, told Fox News said he had received an intelligence report about ISIS cells moving around near Juarez, the Mexican border town just south of El Paso.
“People along the border, where the trails of these people coming across, have found Muslim clothing, have found Koran books, laying on the side of the road or side of the trail,” Painter said. “So we know that there are Muslims that have come across and been smuggled into the United States.”
Fears and rumors about terrorists entering the U.S. through the southern border emerged after the 9-11 attacks.
A 2005 report from the Congressional Research Service on Border Patrol apprehensions of so-called “Other Than Mexicans” found that “the data indicate that each year hundreds of aliens from countries known to harbor terrorists or promote terrorism are apprehended attempting to enter the country illegally between POE (Ports of Entry).”
No terrorists attacks, however, have ever occurred in the U.S. where the people entered through Mexico.
Recently, Homeland Security officials have repeatedly refuted claims of ISIS affiliates planning to cross the U.S.-Mexico border.
Following Homeland Security Secretary Johnson’s rebuttal of Hunter’s ISIS claim, the congressman’s spokesman, Kasper, said “a denial by DHS fails to account for information confirmed by other entities, through their own sourcing.”
Shawn Moran, vice president of the National Border Patrol Council, the agents’ union, said he believed there was some truth to Hunter’s statement about the ISIS threat.
“I haven't been able to confirm anything from CBP (Customs and Border Protection) or Border Patrol, …but (Hunter’s) source seems credible,” he said, explaining that he had spoken to Hunter’s office and investigated the claim on his own.
Moran said he believed “that someone with connections to ISIS has been arrested” near the Texas border, though he added, “we don't know how nebulous” those connections might be.
He said he hadn’t received any information about ISIS or other new threats from his superiors, or any calls to be on heightened alert.
“We've gotten no guidance on ISIS, no guidance on Ebola," Moran said. “No briefings, no announcements that there will be policies or training."
