Free Republic

Southern border agents arrested sixteen people on the FBI's terror watchlist last month as border arrests are set to outpace record numbers encountered in the last year. It brings the total number of encounters for the 2023 fiscal year to 69, which is on the trajectory to exceeding the 98 encounters made in the year prior. It comes as Republicans demand answers for why the Biden administration is spending millions to store unused border wall panels as the country is inundated with illegal migrants risking their lives to cross onto American soil, and enough drugs to kill five times the...

Border Patrol stopped a dozen individuals whose names are on the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Database (TSDB) in August, bringing the total for the fiscal year to a number that is triple the previous five fiscal years combined – as agents deal with a historic migrant surge at the border. New data released by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) this week show that there were 12 individuals encountered by Border Patrol between ports of entry at the border whose names matched on the TSDB – which contains information about the identities of those who are known or "reasonably suspected" of being...

Biden’s catastrophically botched withdrawal from Afghanistan was bad enough in itself, diminishing America’s standing in the world and projecting an image of weakness that has encouraged and emboldened enemies of our nation worldwide. The fallout from it, however, could be incalculably worse. A Defense Department (DoD) whistleblower has revealed that 324 of the Afghans whom U.S. forces brought to the United States as the disaster in Afghanistan was unfolding appeared on the department’s Biometrically Enabled Watchlist (BEWL), which includes terrorists, and yet were admitted into the country without being vetted. No one who has been watching the spreading dumpster...

WASHINGTON, D.C. — In an unprecedented move to protect the safety and security of millions of Americans, the FBI has added itself to the FBI watchlist. "When we reflected on the vast number of pedophiles, insurrectionists, frauds, and killers in our organization, we thought: 'Holy cow! Someone needs to keep an eye on these weirdos!'" said FBI Director Christopher Wray to reporters. "That's why today we have decided to place the FBI on the FBI watchlist so the FBI can keep a close eye on the FBI before the FBI does something terrible." Congress is demanding oversight of the FBI's...

As if dealing with the Taliban as a "partner" and taking the Houthis off the terrorist watch list weren't enough, Joe Biden has decided to succor another terrorist group: FARC. He took them off the terrorist watch list. Most people don't remember them, but these were the vile Marxist narco-terrorists who terrorized Colombia for 60 years and then got off scot-free based on a "peace deal" from a lousy Colombian president whose hankering for a Nobel prize was so strong that he literally ignored a popular referendum rejecting such a deal. They had good reason: in FARC's war on that...

A secret watchlist of suspected terrorists maintained by the FBI was exposed online after a configuration error and then not fixed for several weeks after being reported, according to Comparitech. Head of security research at the firm, Bob Diachenko, said he discovered the Terrorist Screening Center (TSC) list on July 19, when the exposed Elasticsearch server was indexed by search engines Censys and ZoomEye. The list was left online without a password or any other authentication to secure it. It contained 1.9 million records, including full name, TSC watchlist ID, citizenship, gender, date of birth, passport number and more. The...

A secret terrorist watchlist with 1.9 million records, including classified "no-fly" records was exposed on the internet. The list was left accessible on an Elasticsearch cluster that had no password on it. Millions of people on no-fly and terror watchlists exposed July this year, Security Discovery researcher Bob Diachenko came across a plethora of JSON records in an exposed Elasticsearch cluster that piqued his interest. The 1.9 million-strong recordset contained sensitive information on people, including their names, country citizenship, gender, date of birth, passport details, and no-fly status. The exposed server was indexed by search engines Censys and ZoomEye, indicating...

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is now getting ready to hire public companies, individual contractors outside government, to scour public data and social media in order to provide information for the new “domestic terror watch lists.” From the description it appears DHS is going to pay “big tech” (Google, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, SnapChat, Twitter, etc.), via contracts, to hire and organize internal monitoring teams to assist the government by sending information on citizens they deem “dangerous.” Gee, what could possibly go wrong with this?… NBC is reporting on these new developments as the U.S. intelligence apparatus is preparing to...

The Democrat chair of the U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security wants Republican Sen. Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley put on the federal “No Fly” list due to the “actions they participated in” when the U.S. Capitol was ransacked by Trump supporters on Jan. 6. When asked by SiriusXM host Joe Madison whether the no-fly sanction should be applied if Cruz and Hawley are found liable for the capitol unrest, House Homeland Security Committee Chair Rep. Bennie G. Thompson said, “There’s no question about it.” “There’s no exemption for being put on the no-fly list,” said Thompson. “Even a member...

WASHINGTON, July 17, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation's largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, today applauded the passage of an amendment to the Intelligence Authorization Act (IAA) requiring a report on the dissemination of the federal government's watchlist to more than 60 foreign countries. The amendment was introduced by Representative Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and requires the Director of National Intelligence and the Secretary of State to submit a report to Congress detailing various guidelines governing the government's dissemination of the watchlist, which includes more than 1 million people, to foreign countries. The watchlist...

CHICAGO (MarketWatch) -- Five Moroccan nationals arrested Wednesday for breaking into a San Antonio courthouse were found to have pictures of public buildings, water systems and malls across the country, Reuters reports. While they were nabbed by local police, the suspects will be interrogated by a joint terrorism task force that includes the FBI and immigration enforcement authorities, the wire service reported.

A Frenchman who had been on France's terror watchlist after showing signs of having been radicalized to extremist Islam has been accepted into France's police force. The man was placed on the terror watch list in 2012 as a known radical Islamist, and France’s intelligence service DGSI kept him under surveillance for a number of years after being alerted to his behavior, according to French news site RTL. Unaware he was being watched, the man, who has not been named, applied to join the armed forces, but wasn’t successful. He then decided to try to join the French police force....

The case was over the abduction of Dong-Shik, a South Korean who was a permanent resident of the US and had spent seven years providing aid and proselytizing to North Korean defectors. An Israeli NGO announced on Monday that a US federal court in Washington, DC has granted it a historic $330 million default award judgment against North Korea in a civil damages trial for wrongful death, torture and kidnapping. The judgment, only announced Monday, but written on April 9, included $15 million dollars each to the son and brother of Reverend Dong Shik Kim, presumed dead, as well as...

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — A former North Carolina police chief whose mother is Italian and father is Somali said Sunday that he’s disappointed with his country of 42 years after he was detained at John F. Kennedy International Airport. Former Greenville Police Chief Hassan Aden of Alexandria, Virginia, who now works as a law enforcement consultant, said he was detained March 13 on his return trip from Paris for his mother’s 80th birthday. He supports the officers of the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, but he believes his 90-minute detention was unreasonable, he said in a telephone interview.

In the airport terminal the attacker assaulted a patrol of three counter-terrorism soldiers, wrestling one of them to the floor and trying to take her gun. The man was shot dead by patrol officers as they attempted to protect the women and members of the public at the airport, according to France's Interior Ministry.... ...A police source said the man was "a radicalised Muslim known to intelligence services and the justice system" and had a history of thefts and violent robberies.

Federal homeland security officials should move faster to require rail and transit agencies across the nation to screen their employees using federal terrorism watch lists, U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer said. The New York Democrat told The Associated Press on Saturday that the Department of Homeland Security should immediately step in to enforce a recommendation made nearly a decade ago that mass transit employees be crosschecked with the federal watch lists. “With terror threats from ISIS sympathizers and lone wolves ever possible, it is just not acceptable that every single front line transit employee is not checked against the federal terror...

Insanity Shortly after the Nice attack, in which an Islamic radical killed 86 people by driving a truck through a crowd watching Bastille Day fireworks, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said France would have to “learn to live with terrorism.” As you might expect, the remark landed with a thud, since people who appease terrorists have a tendency not to live at all. Still, France seems hell-bent on walking a self-destructive path that leans heavily on playing defense. Now, as Reuters reports , we know that the challenges created by such a strategy are growing by the day. Unless things...

I’ve heard a lot lately about restricting those on the “terror watch list” or “no-fly list” from purchasing a firearm. I get the appeal, because no logical person wants to enable a bad person to do bad things. But if we’re going to restrict the Second Amendment for these people without due process, why stop at just one amendment if it means saving lives? Should people on a terror watch list be allowed to attend a suspected radicalized house of worship? Why allow them to congregate at all? Why is a person suspected of planning terror allowed to have a...

Of all the details investigators have uncovered about Orlando terrorist Omar Mateen, perhaps the most infuriating is the fact that he spent 10 months on a government watch list, yet had no trouble buying an assault rifle and a handgun. Authorities placed Mateen on a watch list in May 2013 after coworkers at the Florida courthouse where he was a security guard told authorities he boasted of connections to al Qaeda and other terrorists organizations. He remained on the list for 10 months, and FBI Director James Comey told reporters this week that during that time the agency placed Mateen...

LetÂ’s go back in time to The New York TimesÂ’ 2010 article about then-eight-year-old Mikey Hicks. Was he a cub scout or a terrorist? His parents knew. In fact, most people with cognitive function would know that heÂ’s not hell bent on attacking the country, but our government wasnÂ’t sure. He could be the face of absolute evil, so thank goodness the U.S. Senate could bar him from buying a firearm since heÂ’s on one of the many terror watch lists maintained by the FBI. He never had any due process of law concerning his designation as someone who might...