10 people on the terror watchlist crossed border in July

The CBP enforcement statistics for the Fiscal Year 2022, which has seen more than 1.8 million total Border Patrol encounters with border crossers, revealed that 66 people have been apprehended so far that were on the Terrorist Screening Dataset used by the FBI, reports Fox News.

"Encounters of watchlisted individuals at our borders are very uncommon, underscoring the critical work CBP Agents and Officers carry out every day on the frontlines," the report details. Statistics show that the encounters have increased in frequency from last year.

The 66 who apprehended were on the Terrorist Screening Dataset is more than double from the previous five years combined. In 2017, encounters with those on terror watchlists were rare, at just two. That number rose to 6 in 2018, but down to three in 2019 and 2020. Fiscal Year 2021 saw 15 encounters.

The rise of terror watchlist suspects correlates with the rise in overall border encounters. In Fiscal Year 2022 alone, 1,822,160 encounters have been logged since July, with two months remaining in the year. That number is already higher than 2021's total of 1,662,167, which is already four times high than 2020's figure of 405,036, according to Fox News.

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) encountered almost 200,000 illegal migrants at the border in July. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas recently claimed that the border was "secure." In response to Mayorkas' comments FBI Director Christopher Wray said the border presents "significant security issues."

Border states have begun taking action, with the governors of Texas and Arizona bussing migrants to DC. Texas has sent busses to New York City, with Mayor Eric Adams admitting that his city needs help dealing with the crisis. New Arizona GOP gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake has made border security central to her campaign, telling a crowd at CPAC that narco-terrorists are taking over the southern border.

"We have to start treating the cartels as terrorists, and we're going to start kicking them out, putting them on no-fly lists, and taking away any of their earnings to help build the wall, frankly," she told the Texas crowd.

"The media's more interested in attacking the good men and women who are running for office who care about this country than attacking people who are trying to invade our country and pedal drugs and poison our children with these drugs, and frankly, let's remember the humanitarian angle. These people coming across... these people are going to be indentured servants to the cartels, that's not how we operate in America, and I'm not okay with that," said Lake.