The United States intelligence leadership has warned this Monday of the risks to national security that the country faces following the offensive that Israel has carried out in Gaza following the terrorist attacks of October 7. The director of the FBI has warned the United States Senate Intelligence Committee that the situation on the border with Mexico, which has left records of irregular crossings in recent months, represents a risk that could be exploited by international terrorist organizations. “We are seeing a large number of very dangerous threats emanating from the border,” said Christopher Wray, who heads the Federal Investigation Agency.
When asked by Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio, Wray assured that his institution has detected a human trafficking network whose facilitators abroad have ties to the Islamic State (ISIS). “It is an issue that concerns us greatly and to which we have dedicated an enormous amount of effort to investigate together with our allies,” said the official. “We have registered the entry of several dangerous individuals of all kinds,” he added.
Wray made it clear that he did not want to go into detail in an open session in the Upper House. Once a year, all the heads of the country's top intelligence agencies appear before lawmakers to detail the threats facing the United States. This morning they attended the Capitol, in addition to the director of the FBI, Avril Haines, director of the National Intelligence agency; William Burns, head of the CIA; Jeffrey Kruse, director of the Military Intelligence Agency; Timothy Haugh of the National Security Agency and State Department Undersecretary Brett Holmgren.
The head of the FBI indicated that the institution is currently investigating the plans of the network, which he has not mentioned by name. At another point, however, Wray assured the legislative body that, for the moment, the agency “is not following the trail of any terrorist plot that has entered through the border with Mexico.” “Of course, we are concerned about the vulnerabilities that could be exploited by terrorist organizations,” he added after a question from Texas Senator John Cornyn.
Wray briefly recalled a case from May 2022, when the FBI managed to disable a plot that aimed to assassinate former President George W. Bush. The attack was planned by Shibab Ahmed Shibab, who arrived in the United States irregularly in September 2020. Months later, living in Columbus, Ohio, he requested asylum despite operating a human trafficking network. According to federal agents, Shibab used contacts in Egypt to locate and recruit former militants of the Iraqi Baath party, loyal to Saddam Hussein. The objective was to remove these men from Iraq, send them to Brazil and then cross them into US territory across the Mexican border to expand the organization's presence.
Drug trafficking has also been discussed in the parliamentary control session. Avril Haines, director of the National Intelligence Agency, spoke about the fight against trafficking in fentanyl, the powerful synthetic opiate that has left a large epidemic in the United States. Haines stopped for a moment to talk about the cartel situation in Mexico. “There is no doubt that dealing with cartels is a challenge for the Mexican Government. There are parts of the country that are, in effect, under the control of the cartels in certain aspects,” Haines assured the senators.
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Republican lawmakers have been those interested in exploiting the vulnerability of the border in the Intelligence Committee. President Joe Biden's management of immigration policy is becoming one of the main points of the campaign towards the presidential elections on November 5. Republican politicians describe the intense activity on the border as a crisis that puts the country's internal security at risk.
“Last year, 169 individuals on the list of potential terrorists were detained on the border with Mexico. And this year they are 58″, said Cornyn, a senator who has announced his intentions to become leader of the Republicans in the Senate after Mitch McConnell's announcement that he will retire at the end of this legislature. The legislator also recalled that last year 37,000 Chinese citizens were detained on the southern border, a figure ten times higher than in 2022. Wray, however, assured that from that number it could not be distinguished those who tried to cross with dark intentions or who simply wanted to flee the Communist Party.
The repercussions of Gaza
Avril Haines, the director of the National Intelligence Agency, has also warned that the conflict in Gaza is “likely” to leave “a generational impact on terrorism.” The official assured that Israel's response to the terrorist acts perpetrated by Hamas has given new motives to jihadist cells with links to Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. “We have also seen how this has inspired individuals to commit anti-Semitic and Islamophobic terrorist acts around the world,” Haines added.
The risks that conflict in the Middle East could trigger were addressed in the annual report to the intelligence community, which was published in February. The document indicates that Hezbollah will continue to pressure Israel with contained force to prevent Benjamin Netanyahu's government from declaring an open war against Lebanon. US intelligence also predicts continued attacks on its interests in Iraq and Syria by Iranian-backed militias.
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