Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) said on Sunday night during an interview on Fox News that ten known terrorists are captured every day at the U.S. border illegally trying to enter the country.
Scalise — who made the remarks while appearing on Fox News’ “Life, Liberty and Levin” with host Mark Levin — discussed the importance of securing the U.S. border and building a border wall.
“It’s a lame duck session, but things can still get done, right?” Levin asked.
“We’re in a battle right now over proper funding of the border wall,” Scalise said. “I was just in a meeting with President Trump a few days ago, clearly, this has been a big priority of his.”
“When you look at this caravan coming across, you have in this caravan of people who’ve said ‘we’re going to ignore your laws and just storm across the border,’ there are already over 600 known criminal convicts in the caravan,” Scalise continued. “It’s incredibly important that we secure our border. I applaud President Trump for being willing to do it.”
“Every single day — this doesn’t get mainstream media coverage and it should — every single day in this country, at least 10 known terrorists are captured trying to cross into America through our border,” Scalise concluded. “Why are we trying to secure the border? To keep America safe.”
WATCH:
A fact-check of Scalise’s statement suggests that the Congressman may have been referring to arrests of convicted criminals at the border and not known terrorists.
A report last month from the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) found:
- From only public realm reporting, 15 suspected terrorists have been apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border, or en route, since 2001.
- The 15 terrorism-associated migrants who traveled to the U.S. southern border likely represent a significant under-count since most information reflecting such border-crossers resides in classified or protected government archives and intelligence databases.
- From intelligence community sources with access to protected government information, the Center for Immigration Studies has learned that at least 100 migrants from “countries of interest”, encountered between 2012 and 2017 at or en route to the southern border, matched the U.S. terrorism “watch lists” known as the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (TIDE), or the Terrorist Screening Database (TSDB).
- While the list provided in this Backgrounder is necessarily partial, indications are strong that far greater numbers of migrants with terrorism connections crossed the land border but cannot be publicly reported.
Statistics released by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) for fiscal year 2018 (FY18) show that 6,259 convicted criminals have been arrested as a result of law enforcement actions by CBP, which is over 17 a day.
Given that Scalise was talking about convicted criminals in the caravan right before he made the remarks about known terrorists arrested at the border, Scalise may have been referring to arrests of convicted criminals.
In other words, had Scalise used the words “convicted criminals” instead of “known terrorists” his statement would be 100 percent correct, and given the fact that he was talking about convicted criminals right before making the remark about terrorists it is possible he simply misspoke.