Just In: Border Agents Apprehended 16 Individuals Named In FBI’s Terrorist Screening Database, Crossing The Southern Border Illegally 

Latest reports issued by the Customs and Border Protection unveiled that last month, Border Patrol officials arrested 16 individuals on the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Database. 

The people mentioned on the FBI’s watchlist got caught while trying to cross the U.S.-Mexico border illegally. 

Since the beginning of Customs and Border Protection’s fiscal year 2023, which commenced in October last year, 69 individuals from the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Database have been detained at the U.S.-Mexico border. 

Moreover, this year, CBP’s Office of Field Operations has bumped into 214 individuals from the FBI’s watch list at the southern and northern ports of entry. 

The watch list encounters at the southern border are on the path to outrunning 98 imprisonments from last year.    

From the year 2017 to 2020, only 8 people were captured from the FBI’s watch list. Moreover, another 15 were caught at the southern border in 2021. 

Customs and Border Protection’s report unveiled that the officers bumped into over 150,000 border crossers in February, and nearly the same amount of illegal border crossings occurred in January. 

In the financial year 2022, a historic amount of 2.4 million encounters were faced by the border agents Surprisingly, the financial year 2023 seems to break last year’s record by having 1 million encounters in just the first 3 months. 

The acting commissioner of CBP, Troy Miller said that CBP has introduced a new app that enables migrants to get an appointment at a port of entry. 

Miller stated: 

“The new border enforcement measures kept February’s overall encounter numbers nearly even with January.”

He added: 

“The app cuts out the smugglers and decreases migrant exploitation. CBP continues to make improvements to the app to address feedback we have received from stakeholders.”