The threat of a terrorist attack in the US has increased ‘vastly’ in recent months, top law enforcement officials have warned.
Attorney General Merrick Garland made this astonishing admission while testifying before the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday during a hearing devoted to investigating the department’s politicization.
“I am concerned about the possibility of a terrorist attack in the country after October 7,” said Attorney General Garland. “The threat level to us has increased enormously.”
‘Every morning we worry about this question. We are trying to hunt down anyone who wants to harm the country,” he continued. “This is obviously an important priority for the Ministry of Justice.”
FBI Director Christopher Wray, speaking to another committee on the other side of Capitol Hill in the Senate, agreed, saying, “We have seen the threat from foreign terrorists rise to a whole other level” after the terrorist attack from Hamas on October 7.
“We have seen a rouges gallery of foreign terrorist organizations calling for attacks on Americans and our allies,” Wray said.
“Just during my time as FBI director, we have disrupted multiple terrorist attacks around American cities.”
“It would be hard for me to think of a time when so many different threats to our public safety and national security were so great at the same time.”
Wray said threats against Jewish Americans have been particularly acute.
“We have seen an increased threat to the Jewish community in the United States.”
Although he said Jewish communities were targeted before the Oct. 7 attack, threats have “increased dramatically” since then.
“Religiously motivated hate crimes, almost 60 percent of them, are against the Jewish community,” Wray testified, noting that the community makes up only two percent of the U.S. population.
“Increasingly worrying is the potential for a coordinated attack here at home, similar to an attack we have seen in the Russian theater.”
According to the FBI chief, one vector for threats is to enter the country through the US-Mexico border.
“Individuals who, when they come in, are armed with forged documents or have somehow sneaked in, or individuals about whom there is not enough derogatory information in the intelligence community to put them on a watch list,” are of particular concern, Wray testified.
“Because we have fewer fundraising efforts abroad against foreign terrorism, there are fewer sources of intelligence” to identify which individuals entering the U.S. pose a threat, the FBI director said.
While there have been numerous reports of known terrorists illegally entering the country through the southern border, unwatchlisted suspects, about whom there is little information, are also a major concern, Wray told senators.
These individuals pose a threat because once domestically they are difficult to track – and an FBI terrorist task force response may be required to regain control of such people.
FBI Director Christopher Wray said terrorist threats against the U.S. have risen to a “whole different level” and that the U.S.-Mexico border poses unique challenges because migrants often enter the country using forged documents.
U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland will testify before the House Judiciary Committee on June 4. During the hearing, he said the threat of a terror attack on the US has increased “tremendously.”
Wray said there have been waves of cyberattacks on U.S. infrastructure, including ransomware attacks.
He also raised the alarm about China ‘relentless attempts to steal our intellectual property.’
In addition, he said the threat of fentanyl smuggling has increased, adding that there have been individual seizures of the drug that “could wipe out an entire state.”
One such FBI raid in New Mexico found enough fentanyl to kill everyone in the state “along with hand grenades, ballistic vests, you know, the whole nine yards.”
And the fentanyl problem is tied to the other side of the border, Wray said, referring to Mexico.
The FBI has seized stockpiles of fentanyl that could wipe out entire states, Wray testified
Wray previously raised alarm bells when he testified in December that he had “never seen a time when all the threats, or so many threats, were high at exactly the same time.”
In a conversation with Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., the South Carolinian at the time probed Wray to see whether he was seeing warning signs similar to those before the Sept. 11 attacks.
Wray then responded, “Everywhere I go, I see flashing lights.”
“Given the steady pace of calls for attacks by foreign terrorist organizations since October 7, we are working around the clock to identify and disrupt potential attacks from those inspired by Hamas’s heinous terrorist attacks in Israel,” Wray testified in December.