“That 4,000 number was bull,” said W. Ralph Basham, who served as commissioner of United States Customs and Border Protection from 2006 to 2009, during the Bush administration.
“The idea that you have that many terrorists flooding across the border when you have all of these dedicated agents focused on stopping that kind of activity is ridiculous,” Mr. Basham said.
A senior American counterterrorism official said on Tuesday night that an annual average of three known or suspected terrorists — all of whom were on watch lists — had tried to enter the United States at a legal border crossing or entry point over the last several years, and had been denied…
Counterterrorism officials have long discounted the threat of Islamic State or Qaeda terrorists entering through the southwest border. In some cases, the opposite has happened, said Seamus Hughes, the deputy director of George Washington University’s program on extremism, citing homegrown American extremists who crossed into Mexico to avoid being detected on no-fly lists.
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