Former CIA Deputy Director Mike Morrell warned in a recent article about the terrorist threat posed by vulnerabilities along the US-Mexico border.
“Given the particular sensitivity of the southern border, Biden’s Recent Executive Order “Restricting the asylum process is a significant step toward limiting entry into the United States,” Morell and Graham Allison, a former United States assistant secretary of defense for policy and planning, wrote in an editorial published June 10 in Foreign Affairs.
“But with U.S. Customs and Border Protection reporting nearly 200,000 encounters with migrants at this border each month through 2024, and thousands more crossing the border each week undetected, the government will need to take additional action — including the use of national emergency authorities — to ensure that terrorists cannot exploit this overcrowded channel to enter the country,” he added.
The editorial noted that FBI Director Christopher Wray has appeared before Congress at least eight times since last year — including Earlier this month, a – Three distinct categories of threats to the American homeland were identified: international terrorism, domestic terrorism and state-sponsored terrorism. In December, Wray told the Senate Judiciary Committee that all three have been “escalated simultaneously.”
Migrants are processed by US Border Patrol near Jacumba Hot Springs after crossing the US-Mexico border on June 13, 2024 in San Diego, California. (Qian Weizhong/VCG via Getty Images)
Speaking about an already heightened threat environment since Hamas militants attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, “Wray has repeatedly drawn attention to security lapses along the United States’ southern border, where thousands of people enter the country each week without identification,” Morell and Graham noted.
“Last year, hundreds of people on the United States’ terrorist watch list tried to enter the country via the southern border,” Morell and Ellison wrote. “It’s not hard to imagine that an individual or group intent on causing harm could cross the border — where U.S. officials reported 2.5 million encounters with migrants in 2023 — and then purchase assault rifles to carry out a mass massacre. The United States has no shortage of places where hundreds, if not thousands, of people regularly gather — and all of these could be ready targets for those seeking to incite terror.”
The editorial said that “the stated intentions of terrorist groups, their growing capabilities demonstrated by recent successful and failed attacks around the world, and the fact that several serious plots have been foiled in the United States point to an uncomfortable but inevitable conclusion.”
“Simply put, the United States faces a grave threat of terrorist attack in the coming months,” Morell and Allison said.
In addition to Ray’s warnings, the article details how United States Central Command (CENTCOM) commander General Eric Kurilla has been warning about terror groups his forces are fighting in the Middle East, especially since the Biden administration withdrew US forces from Afghanistan. Kurilla has paid particular attention to ISIS-K, the ISIS affiliate in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Earlier this year, ISIS-K carried out the deadliest terrorist attack in Iran since the founding of the Islamic Republic, with two suicide bombers killing at least 95 people at a memorial marking the anniversary of the death of senior Iranian military official Qassem Soleimani, who was killed in a January 2020 operation by US forces.
FBI Director Christopher Wray testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC on December 5, 2023. Wray called for renewal of the authorizations of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
Former assistant FBI director warns of ‘great vulnerability’ linked to rising border violence
ISIS-K attacked again in March, “when four militants attacked a terrorist group, killing 145 people and injuring more than 550.” Concert halls in Moscow” wrote Morrell and Allison.
The editorial said terrorist plots foiled in the United States in recent years should serve as “a final warning.”
In April 2022, the Justice Department accused an Iranian government official based in Tehran of attempting to hire an assassin to murder former US national security adviser John Bolton. The following month, the FBI reported “it had foiled a plan by an Iraqi citizen living in Ohio to smuggle four men across the southern border to assassinate former President George W. Bush,” the article said.
A huge fire rages at the Crocus City Hall on the western outskirts of Moscow, Russia, Friday, March 22, 2024. Several gunmen have entered the Moscow concert hall and opened fire with automatic weapons on the crowd. (Sergey Vedyashkin/Moscow News Agency via AP)
The FBI recently shared confidential information with Politico that revealed the agency had thwarted a plot to attack critical infrastructure in the U.S. last year.
“The statements of the FBI director and the Centcom commander certainly reflect the classified intelligence they are reading and the law enforcement and military operations in which their organizations are involved,” the editorial said. “Their words should be taken seriously.”
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Morell and Allison also urged Washington to “consider something otherwise unthinkable: working with the Taliban” to potentially exchange limited intelligence to target ISIS-K militants abroad.
“Taking these steps would be difficult even in the best of times, much less before an election. But terrorists can strike without warning, and they seem to have no need to respect the U.S. political calendar,” Morell and Ellison wrote. “Over the past two decades, under both Republican and Democratic administrations, the efforts of thousands of Americans in the military and intelligence communities have protected the country from another 9/11 or worse. This is an extraordinary achievement, but the job is far from done. A terrorist attack is a preventable disaster. As the threat grows, policymakers must rise to the challenge of protecting the American homeland.”
