Via the Daily Caller, Ebola’s not the only threat potentially looming across the border. This is … quite a claim by Hunter. Has anyone else made it? Jim Geraghty notes that Dem Rep. Tim Bishop recently said that 40 of the 100 Americans who went to fight for ISIS have now returned and are being tailed by the FBI, but he didn’t say anything about how they got here. Presumably they flew back and showed their U.S. passports at the gate; that capability is what makes ISIS a special threat. GOP Rep. (and Senate candidate) Tom Cotton has accused Mexican drug cartels of actively collaborating with ISIS, but it’s unclear if he has a government source for that info and in any case he hasn’t claimed that ISIS has already made an attempt to enter the United States. Hunter is the first member of Congress I’m aware of to say so, citing a source inside the Border Patrol.

As of three weeks ago, DHS chief Jeh Johnson insisted he’d seen no evidence (yet) that ISIS has tried to enter the U.S. from Mexico (as did the Pentagon back in August), although…

Last month Utah U.S. Rep. Jason Chaffetz asked Department of Homeland Security chief Jeh Johnson about a report that four men with ties to terrorists were apprehended trying to enter the U.S. through Texas on Sept. 10.

Johnson said that he had heard reports “to that effect,” but did not elaborate.

Either (a) Hunter’s source is wrong, (b) Hunter’s source is right and the 10 were nabbed very recently, or (c) Hunter’s source is right and the feds, starting with Johnson, are keeping it quiet. If the answer is (c), they might have a legit reason for doing so — if you publicize the fact that terrorists have been captured before they’ve been interrogated, you’ll spook any other jihadis who are already here before you’ve had a chance to chase them down. Then again, the feds might also have an illegitimate reason for keeping quiet: Namely, it could be this is just ol’ fashioned ass-covering by a president and party that are determined to get amnesty done this year and know that news of ISIS crossing our porous border would kill that dream pronto. Maybe we’ll find out that Hunter was right sometime in December, after the midterm votes are in and Obama has already ordered his mass amnesty. If the feds are going to be unaccountable to the people by waiting until after elections to institute key policies, they might as well save the bad national security news for that period too.

Incidentally, and for what it’s worth, Hunter says here that none other than Martin Dempsey claimed that open borders are a huge natsec problem vis-a-vis ISIS. That’s true — but I’m not sure he was referring to America’s borders when he said that. Reading this account of his remarks, I got the sense that he was referring to the EU and the freedom European jihadis will have in crossing national borders once they’ve returned from their tours with ISIS.