“The Threat Has Absolutely Exploded Beyond Belief”

Todd Bensman’s address to the Middle East Forum, May 14, 2024.

Watch video:

GREGG ROMAN: Good evening, everyone. We have with us a speaker who flew in just this morning from Texas. I’m going to quickly introduce Todd Bensman, Middle East Forum fellow, who focuses on Islamism and immigration; specifically, immigration to the U.S. border. A senior fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies and a longtime fellow of the Middle East Forum. You can catch him on Fox News, Newsmax, writing — he’s had a 23-year career as a journalist and a 10-year career recovering from journalism, working for the Texas Department of Public Safety. 

And he will be testifying on the Hill on Thursday.

Todd, we’re really happy that you’re here to join us tonight, thank you very much.

TODD BENSMAN: Thank you, everybody. I really appreciate being here. I’m always honored to be affiliated with MEF. I’m proud to write and be published by them, and hope that we continue that going into the future.

I was very happy to be able to have an opportunity to come visit and see the conference here. I was going to be in DC, and realized that there would be an opportunity.

I work for the Center for Immigration Studies, that’s my employer here in Washington DC, but I live in Texas. My area of specialty, for years and years, is the nexus between immigration and national security. Particularly Islamist infiltration over the border. That’s kind of my thing.

A few years ago, 2021, I wrote a book called America’s Covert Border War, The Untold Story of Jihadist Infiltration over that border. And the book was really a revelation of counterterrorism programs that had never been reported about, that are down at the border. That we used for 20 years to keep the country safe from people coming across the border from 35 to 40 Muslim-majority countries.

The book reveals these programs, but it also concludes that the actual threat of that was low, maybe, to moderate. Not a huge threat, because those programs did pretty well when we had three or four thousand immigrants [annually] crossing the border from countries of national security interest. Which would be the nations of the Middle East, and the Muslim-majority nations of Eurasia and North Africa, for example.

Three, four thousand a year. And every year we’d have maybe somewhere south of ten who were actually on the FBI watchlist that we would catch. And part of what we would do, then, is we would bring the FBI or the DIA or the CIA down into the detention centers and really hammer them with interrogation. And interview them to try to figure out who they really are, what they’re about, check their pocket trash. Major program.

When I worked for the Department of Public Safety for those 10 years, that’s what my unit did. We participated in this whole counterterrorism infrastructure that was in place, down there.

And we would wring all we could from these immigrants, and then we would deport them. We would always deport them out of the country.

But today, I’m actually scared of what’s going on. The low to moderate threat that I was talking about in my book has absolutely exploded beyond belief. I am worried, and concerned, right now, more than I ever have been.

And it’s not just me. The Department of Homeland Security puts out every year — or actually, they missed the last couple of years, but they put one out for 2024 — a public unclassified version [of the 2024 Threat Assessment].

And that 2024 Threat Assessment points to the border as a critical, major avenue for an Islamic terror attack in the U.S. That’s the current one, for 2024.

A month or two ago, the FBI director Chris Wray went to […] one of the Senate committees and said, I am extremely fearful about the border situation. So many different kinds of threats are coming through the border — criminal and terror threats. And then he named ISIS as a facilitating terrorist organization in Latin America that was working.

This is Christopher Wray. Not crazy Todd Bensman writing a book. It’s DHS, it’s Chris Wray, and it’s a whole lot more.

So, one thing that you should know before we go any further is that we are in the midst of the greatest mass migration crisis in American history. By the metrics. We have never had the numbers, crossing over the last three years, that are crossing now.

At least 10 million in 36 months. Most of them got in, and they’re staying in. They’re not leaving, we’re not deporting them. We are just simply taking everybody who comes to the border.

So, word of this, of course, spreads. This is all policy driven. We let people enter and stay by choice. And we make an affirmative choice not to deport people. Or detain people.

So, everybody’s got a cell phone. Selfies, man. They’re all sending selfies back, and villages across the globe are emptying out. Coming this way.

The percentage of people crossing that southern border, right now, who are not Mexican or Central American, is plus 45 percent. Almost half of everybody reaching that border. This is not your grandparents’ — the Mexicans are coming to pick lettuce — kind of a thing. We are seeing people coming into this country from 170 different countries, including all nations that we would regard as Muslim majority nations. All of them.

I spent [time during] the last three years down on the border, usually on the Mexican side and in Central America. I don’t spend a whole lot of time on our side anymore, I’m with the immigrants. And I’ve interviewed hundreds. Thousands. From those countries. I’ve met them. From every nation, just about. Including my favorite one — Dagestan. Which I had to look up. Like, you’re from where? You’re from Dagestan?

Kazakhstan. Uzbekistan. Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan. Everywhere. Name a country, they’re coming across.

The percentage coming from all of those countries, again, is the highest in U.S. history. We have never seen this level of international immigrants coming across.

Greg mentioned I’m going to testify on Thursday, that one’s just about the Chinese coming in. Fifty thousand Chinese crossed that border in 36 months. Way more than anything we’ve ever seen. We’re looking at about 300,000 a month, in one way or another, crossing that border. A mid-level city, every single month, for years.

It’s all policy-driven because of these affirmative decisions to let them in and let them stay. That’s the policy.

Period.

Brand new.

What was that? I have two minutes left? Ok.

What I want to say, then, in my two minutes [laughter] — cause I was just kind of setting the table.

But —

Is that we have seen 340 of these immigrants apprehended who are actually on the FBI’s terrorism watch list. Remember, I told you when I was in intel, we might get 3, 4 or 10, and that was on both [borders], in any given year.

We’re getting dozens and dozens a month, who are on the [watch list] — and those are the ones we catch.

The bigger problem — I mean, that’s a test tube of the pool that’s coming through, those are the ones we caught — are the ones that we accidentally released.

I’ve got, like, ten of those things counted. We’re in such a crush down there that Border Patrol, they run a check, and then they just forget to detain the guy. He flags on the FBI terror watch list, and then we’re doing these crazy interior manhunts to track them down before they kill people.

Now, we haven’t had one yet. But I just wrote a piece for the New York Post about a breach of a military base 35 miles from here. By a Jordanian who crossed that border and another illegal immigrant. In a truck, tried to talk their way in as Amazon delivery men.

When they got pulled over for secondary inspection they gunned it. And tried to bust through into the base.

That, if that’s true, that would be the first border crossing terror attempt. But they’re all mum about it right now, we’re in an election year.

These cases of accidental releases are ubiquitous by comparison with anything that has ever happened before because everybody is busy down there. They’re swamped. They’re overrun, they’re completely overrun.

All of those counterterrorism programs that I talk about in the book — the interviews, the FBI — none of that is happening.

Last year we had 100,000 — not 4,000 — a hundred thousand from those countries crossed into this country, and we let them right through. We wave them right through. There’s almost no vetting. 

They run them through database checks and if they don’t have a record inside the U.S., what are you going to do, go to the Taliban and ask for an intel share? Not happening. Gonna go to Assad and ask him for an intel share on his Syrians coming through?

You’re going to the Venezuelan [President] Maduro, and ask him for an intel share on all his Lebanese terrorists that are crossing our border?

Not happening.

So, don’t believe anything coming out of the Biden DHS right now about how well-vetted everybody is. No, they’re not. None of them are vetted. They’re pouring through.

I’ve met them all — Mauritanians, Senegalese, name a country from any of those places, they’re coming through.

With that, I can just open it up to some questions, here.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Could you tell us what the administration [inaudible] agenda or plan? Why are they doing this?

BENSMAN: Why are they doing this, she asks. I get this all the time. So, there’s a couple of reasons.

One is that the Biden administration needed its progressive left wing of the Democratic coalition, in order to rise above the 15 candidates in the [2020 Democrat] primary. Remember all those candidates in the primary?

Well, the people who occupy that territory believe that immigration enforcement is immoral, evil, cruel, and violates inalienable human rights. And are to be ignored.

The administration needed them. And for their reward he has placed them in the Domestic Policy Council, in DHS, political appointees, the White House, they’re running the whole immigration program. […]

And the NGOs, they’re all coming from NGOs, and they are gaining billions and billions of dollars in contracts and grants to manage what they wrought.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: The French author Renaud Camus came up with the idea of the great replacement. Conventional wisdom holds this to be a conspiracy theory. Do you think it’s a conspiracy theory? Or do you think it’s what’s behind all this?

BENSMAN: I don’t buy into the replacement theory, myself. I’ve seen UN documents that talk about replacing declining birth rates, and to fill employment gaps. That kind of replacement, maybe.

In the United States, my view is that we’re pretty good at, usually pretty good at — better than Europe, certainly — at absorbing diversity. But the short answer is, I’m not a big proponent of that one.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Who provides the money for these people to get here. That guy from Mauritania didn’t walk. Even the ones we see pictures at, right at the border — did they walk from Guatemala? […]

BENSMAN: I always ask, where are you getting the money for this? 

Because it’s a fortune to come here. But remember, you’re not going to gamble your money. You’re not laying money down unless you have a high probability of getting in. And staying in.

So, I always ask that question. And then usually the answer is, from my relatives that are already in the U.S. They’re sending me the money. Or, my uncle sold a plot of land, and I borrowed. I borrowed the money from a bunch of friends, and I have to pay them back, with interest. […]

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Todd, thanks very much for joining us this evening, much appreciated. Perhaps you could give us a little bit of background, for the benefit of folks in the room, that potentially some Islamist terrorists, or potential terrorists, are coming from Latin America, in countries where they have lived for some period of time. Maybe that’s something that people aren’t that aware of.

BENSMAN: We’ve seen them. They’re definitely coming. Mainly Lebanese Venezuelans, we see a lot of them.

One of them crossed about two years ago, from Matamoros to Brownsville. He flagged immediately on all of the lists. They put him in detention, the FBI interviewed him, and then somebody from ICE headquarters ordered him released — against the FBI’s recommendations — on grounds that he could get sick from Covid.

[laughter and chatter]

That’s a true story. I have the documents, the records were all leaked. And that guy’s running around in the Dearborn area, pursuing an asylum claim. So, yeah.

And we also have had Hez come through. Recently. Including one who, as soon as he got across, said, ok, I’m going to, I give, I’m going to tell you all the stuff.

And he did. And I guess he was thinking he could cut a deal for him to stay, if he turned on Hez. And gave them up. So.

[…]

We put a database up of national security vetting failures. There’s about 50 up there, it’s terrible. Lots of failures when it comes to Islamists coming across, coming in on legal visas. Cis.org.

And you can read all my work on that, and much more, at ToddBensman.com. I write for a bunch of different publications.

Most recently I’ve been writing about the Columbia Journalism School putting up a big memorial to fallen Gazan journalists who are, half of them, are working for U.S. designated terrorist organizations. I wrote two pieces on that. And an op-ed piece recently on Biden’s plan to bring in Gazans, under the headline, “Hard Hell No.”

Thanks, everybody.