During his most recent episode of his “Verdict” podcast, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) discussed the news that an illegal immigrant who was arrested crossing the border had admitted to being a member of one of the world’s largest Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO).
22-year-old Lebanese national Basel Bassel Ebbadi was arrested on March 9 near El Paso, Texas. After being arrested, he told border patrol agents that he was a member of the Hezbollah terrorist group and that he was planning to make a bomb in the United States.
“That is what happens when Joe Biden and the Democrats open up our southern border,” Cruz said. “And it is inviting the inevitable, which is what just happened. Hezbollah terrorists crossing our border with the intention of carrying out acts of terror in the United States.”
Cruz then discussed the recent spike in the number of illegal immigrants on the terrorist watchlist. More than “172 people on the terror watchlist” were arrested last year, Cruz said.
“Now that’s troubling,” he added. “But what’s much more troubling is the hundreds of thousands of gotaways. Understand that 172 are the people they apprehended — that gives you an indication that the volume coming across of terrorist or potential terrorists has exploded, has dramatically, has exponentially increased. But the really serious terrorists are the ones that don’t get apprehended, are the ones that are gotaways.”
“I’m very worried about ten, twenty, fifty, a hundred more Hezbollah and Hamas terrorists coming over,” he continued. “And intending to do something worse than 9/11, intending to do something on the order of magnitude of October 7, or even worse. This is a clear and present danger. And it is caused daily by Joe Biden and congressional Democrats, leaving our border wide open.”
He also noted that in the current fiscal year, there have already been 59 additional illegal immigrants apprehended at the border who are on the terrorist watchlist.
