Trump Administration Won't Back Up President's Terror Claim

Data provided by his own administration shows that the issue is more complex than he implied in pushing for the border wall.

Erin Banco, Lachlan Markay
12.11.18 1:51 PM ET

President Donald Trump on Tuesday cited the recent apprehension of ten suspected terrorists to bolster his case for building a wall along the southern border, implying that a porous border with Mexico is leaving the country vulnerable to national security threats. But the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees security and law enforcement at U.S. borders and ports of entry, was unable to provide data to directly substantiate that claim.

Instead, DHS would only say that it apprehended, on average, ten “known or suspect[ed] terrorists” per day who attempted to enter the country “by air, sea, or land” from October 2017 through September 2018.

“These are individuals that hit against U.S. terror watchlists,” the statement read. “This is in addition to the 17,000 criminals and 3,000 special interest aliens that CBP apprehended at the border last year.”

Asked to clarify whether ten of those recent arrests occurred on the southern border, as the president claimed, DHS simply reiterated its per-day statistic for the year.

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