by Emmitt Barry, with reporting from Washington D.C. Bureau Staff
WASHINGTON (Worthy News) – FBI Director Kash Patel told lawmakers Wednesday that while the U.S. southern border has been largely sealed, the threat of terrorist infiltration has shifted northward, with a sharp rise in encounters along the Canadian frontier.
“The enemy has adapted,” Patel testified before the House Judiciary Committee. “We need more focus on the northern border to stop known or suspected terrorists from coming in from places like China, Russia, the Middle East, Africa, Afghanistan.”
Patel said the expansive geography of the northern boundary makes it far harder to monitor than the southern border. “We’ve encountered almost zero at the southern border since the southern border’s been sealed,” he said. “The problem we are running into is our northern border.”
Data Shows Rising Encounters
Customs and Border Protection (CBP) figures confirm the trend. From the start of fiscal year 2025 through February, CBP recorded 143 encounters with individuals on the terrorism watch list along the northern border, compared with 29 along the southern border.
In fiscal 2024, the northern border saw 358 encounters, compared with 52 at the southern border. Patel told Congress that since Jan. 20, only two known or suspected terrorists have been caught at the Mexican border, while 34 have been apprehended at the Canadian frontier.
The surge comes after the Biden administration added major Mexican cartels to the list of foreign terrorist organizations, leading to a jump in watch-list hits for cartel members at southern crossing points.
Grassley Raises Afghan Airlift Concerns
Patel also faced questions about the Biden administration’s evacuation of tens of thousands of Afghans during the 2021 U.S. withdrawal. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said U.S. intelligence identified 1,600 evacuees with “derogatory” information, including some flagged as possible terrorism suspects. Patel promised a review of those cases.
Global Adversaries in Focus
The FBI director stressed that Russia, China, and Iran remain the bureau’s top counterintelligence priorities, with investigations into each of those nations increasing significantly in recent years.
Still, Patel warned that the northern border poses an urgent national security gap. “It is an absolutely massive border that can’t physically be sealed,” he told lawmakers. “We are going to have to get creative and put more resources into that.”
He also urged greater cooperation with Canada, not only to stop terrorist infiltration but also to combat the flow of fentanyl across the border.
Copyright 1999-2026 Worthy News. This article was originally published on Worthy News and was reproduced with permission.
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