FBI-listed Pakistani illegal immigrant caught at border after Title 42 lift.

Exclusive: Pakistani National on FBI’s Terrorism Watch List Arrested at US-Mexico Border

Border Patrol agents in southeastern Arizona arrested a Pakistani national on the FBI’s terrorism watch list who attempted to illegally enter the United States from Mexico last week, according to two federal sources.

Two senior Customs and Border Protection officials in Washington told the Washington Examiner on Monday afternoon that federal law enforcement agents stationed out of the Ajo, Arizona, station nabbed a noncitizen who is a known or suspected terrorist, according to the federal government’s data.

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The unnamed Pakistani individual crossed only hours after pandemic policy Title 42 had ended and on the same day approximately 700 illegal immigrants were apprehended near Ajo, as the Washington Examiner previously reported.

The apprehension followed another terror watch list bust of an Afghan national in California last week.

Since the start of the government’s fiscal 2023 year through March, Border Patrol agents on the southern border have prevented 80 illegal immigrants on the FBI terror watch list from entering the country. In that same period, Border Patrol made more than 1 million apprehensions, meaning the percentage of known or suspected terrorists is very low.

CBP officers who inspect noncitizens seeking admission at airports, sea ports, and land ports of entry nationwide have encountered 250 people on the list.

The FBI database includes known and suspected terrorists and can include family members or affiliates of such people.

CBP and the FBI both declined to comment about the Pakistani national’s arrest.

Up until early 2021, when President Joe Biden took office, CBP published press releases on its website when its Border Patrol agents apprehended a terror watch list individual. That practice and transparency have ceased over the past two years. CBP did not respond to a request for comment about what prompted it to stop disclosing the incidents.

The spike in the number of terrorist-related arrests over the past two years coincides with a dramatic demographic change in immigrants trying to enter the U.S. by way of the southern border. Mexican and Central Americans have declined as a percentage of immigrants and people from other nations have increased in that time.

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.”

Up to 40% of Border Patrol agents remain pulled from the field to process and transport the high volume of illegal immigrants crossing the border over the past two years, Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz said during remarks at the Border Security Expo in El Paso, Texas last week.