Over 70,000 ‘special interest aliens’ have attempted to enter the US during past two years by way of the southern border prompting ‘extreme concerns’ by border officials

Tens of thousands of people designated as “aliens of special interest” have been detained at the US southern border in the past two years, raising new concerns about the threat of terrorists sneaking into the country.

In total, more than 70,000 migrants have been picked up from countries of particular concern, according to leaked Customs and Border Protection figures.

They include 6,386 nationals from Afghanistan, where the Taliban took control in 2021 after a 20-year war, 659 people from Iran, which supports the terror group Hamas, and Syria, which has been designated a state sponsor of terrorism.

But most of it comes from NATO ally Turkey and the West African nation of Mauritania, which is battling extremist violence.

Migrants detained between ports of entry and do not include persons presented at crossing points.

Nor is there any way of knowing how many were able to enter the country undetected.

The numbers were obtained by Fox News reporter Bill Melugin.

“Border Patrol sources tell me they have extreme concerns about who is coming into the country because they have little to no way to screen people from these special interest countries,” he told X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. .

“They tell me unless they have committed a crime in the US before or are on some kind of federal watch list there is no way to know who they are because most of their home countries don’t share data/records with the US so there is nothing that matches a name when BP agents run fingerprints.”

“Aliens of special interest” are defined by their country of origin, not by intelligence categories on specific individuals.

The term is used by federal agencies to refer to people who come from countries that have conditions that favor or harbor terrorism or pose a potential threat to national security.

The result is a puzzle for US authorities. The countries that host violent terrorist movements are also the countries with populations desperate to flee to safety.

The people who arrived at the US border included 13,624 people from the central Asian country of Uzbekistan, which shares a border with Afghanistan and has supplied foreign fighters for other militant groups.

The figures highlight how numbers across the southern border have generally increased.

Preliminary figures last month recorded around 210,000 arrivals – the third highest number on record.

September’s tally is the highest since December 2022, when 222,000 migrants were apprehended, the second-highest monthly figure on record.

Fiscal year 2023, which ends at the end of September, saw two million illegal immigrants intercepted crossing the border, according to data seen by CBS News. This is the second highest annual number on record.

Meanwhile, the Biden administration has reversed course on one of its key commitments.

Last week, the Department of Homeland Security said it was waiving 26 federal laws to begin building new sections of Donald Trump’s border wall.

The Biden White House has consistently blamed Trump’s tough immigration policies and canceled the wall when President Joe Biden took office.