Staff Reports
New numbers from U.S. Customs and Border Protection, highlighted in a fresh Center for Immigration Studies analysis, show a startling jump in “terrorism‑related encounters” at Southwest land ports of entry. The raw math makes a good headline — and a misleading one if you stop there. The real story is about policy, watchlists and smarter enforcement, not a sudden flood of terrorists lining up for a passport stamp.
The numbers, plain and simple
CBP’s public enforcement table shows about 52 terrorism‑related encounters at Southwest ports in fiscal 2024 versus roughly 11,283 in the current fiscal reporting period. That dramatic contrast is what CIS analyst Andrew Arthur flagged in his analysis. At the same time, Border Patrol apprehensions between ports have plunged — enforcement between ports is up, crossings are down, and overall Southwest border apprehensions are far lower than the chaotic totals we saw a few years ago.
Why the jump isn’t what some headlines imply
Three plain facts explain most of this rise: first, President Trump issued an executive order and the State Department designated multiple cartels and gangs as terrorism‑related, which expanded who can appear on terrorism screening lists. Second, NCTC Director Joe Kent confirmed that tens of thousands of narco‑terrorism and related entries were added to government watchlists, which increases matches during routine checks. Third, with fewer people slipping in between ports, more bad actors are trying the legal gates where officers run those watchlist checks. In short: the metric changed, and so did the odds of a match.
Don’t confuse “encounters” with proven terrorists
CBP’s table counts encounters — hits in a database — not convictions or unique confirmed operatives. The same person can generate multiple encounters, and being on a screening dataset doesn’t mean someone is a proven, active terrorist. That caveat matters because percentage swings from tiny baselines look terrifying on paper. The smarter take is that this is evidence the watchlist and designation policy are moving people into a space where officers can identify and stop them, not proof of a sudden operational failure at the border.
Bottom line: policy worked — now keep hammering the point
This should be a win for border security advocates. Designating cartels and expanding watchlists made routine port screening more effective at flagging dangerous individuals. Critics who scream about “21,600 percent increases” without noting the definitional shifts are doing readers a disservice — and doing a favor for the people who want the border soft. Officials should keep publishing clear, consistent data, and Congress should keep asking questions so the public knows how many unique threats were stopped, how many were repeats, and what happened after a hit. We want hard results, not fuzzy math dressed up as a crisis. If the policy is catching the bad guys at official gates, then fine — let’s finish the job and secure the whole border.
