Terrorist watchlist encounters soar at southern border after Trump reclassifies cartels

The Department of Homeland Security is suddenly reporting a massive surge in the number of terrorism suspects detected crossing the southern border, averaging more than 280 encounters monthly in April and May, according to government data.

Experts told The Washington Times that terrorists are unlikely to suddenly be rushing into the U.S.

Instead, they said, the numbers are likely a reflection of the Trump administration’s designation of a half-dozen Mexican cartels and two international gangs, MS-13 and Tren de Aragua, as foreign terrorist organizations. People who used to cross the border without a terrorist designation are now being tallied.

“It’s not a secret Iranian army trying and failing to infiltrate,” said Simon Hankinson, a border expert at The Heritage Foundation.

However, the numbers show the frequency of crossings of people associated with dangerous cartels.

The numbers come from the Terrorist Screening Database, usually called the government’s terrorist watch list. It contains names of people designated as known or suspected terrorists, based on government agencies’ judgment of their activities and associations.

The Border Patrol detected no migrants on the watch list sneaking across the southern border in February and March, the first full months under President Trump, but found a total of 26 in April and May.

Customs and Border Protection officers at the official border crossings reported an even bigger jump.

Through the first six months of the fiscal year, they had detected 29 migrants on the watch list, or about five monthly. In April and May, the number was 537, or more than 268 monthly.

The State Department in late February added Tren de Aragua, MS-13 and the six cartels as designated terrorist organizations. The cartels are Sinaloa, Jalisco New Generation, Northeast, Gulf, La Nueva Familia and Carteles Unidos, also known as La Resistencia.

Victor Manjarrez, a former senior Border Patrol official now with the University of Texas at El Paso, said the increase in terrorist suspects nabbed by the Border Patrol is primarily from MS-13 and Tren de Aragua members. The increase at the ports of entry, meanwhile, reflects Mexican cartel family members who, he said, had “crossed previously without much fanfare” but now trigger the terrorism database.

Indeed, the U.S. is engaged in an effort to build out its databases on the cartels, The Washington Times has learned.

CBP referred questions for this report to the FBI, which maintains the watch list. The FBI declined to comment.

Border terrorist numbers have been deeply controversial over the years.

Media fact-checkers in 2022 jumped on Republicans when they said terrorists were exploiting an open southern border to enter the U.S. The fact-checkers said there was no evidence it was an issue.

Under pressure from Republicans, however, Customs and Border Protection began releasing numbers on those it encountered on the terrorist watch list. The data was striking.

The Border Patrol reported catching 98 terrorist suspects at the southern border in 2022 and 169 in 2023 before the number settled to 103 in fiscal 2024, which ended in September.

The situation had been relatively calm until the past two months.

Meanwhile, no major changes have been reported at the northern border, further supporting the idea that the surge is fueled by the Trump administration’s broader definition of terrorists.

Mr. Hankinson said the number of encounters with migrants on the watch list has risen even as overall border traffic has plummeted.

Already down dramatically from President Biden’s tenure, total crossings slid even lower after the Homeland Security Department made a high-profile push for immigration arrests in Los Angeles this month.

Mr. Manjarrez said the sudden increase in migrants on the watch list underscores the amount of information the U.S. government has on cartel associates.

He said he is watching how the surge affects cartel operations.

“I have to believe that the cartels had to have some idea, but maybe not. I believe they will look at alternative methods to get the same thing done, but the more they get away from family members, the risk increases,” he said.

Cartel operations stretch well beyond drug trafficking. Cartels control the migrant smuggling routes, and U.S. authorities say they are involved in petroleum theft, weapons trafficking, prostitution and extortion.

During the height of the Biden border surge, some cartels were thought to be making more money from illegal immigrant smuggling payments than from the drug economy.

In addition to known or suspected terrorists, Homeland Security tracks a category known as “special interest aliens.” They are tagged based on nationality and travel patterns.