DHS Secretary Says Biden Was Cutting Terrorists Loose After Arrests

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin revealed that the Biden administration cut terrorists loose after it arrested them. 

“Under President Trump, we’ve arrested, so far, … 2,210 terrorists in this country,” Mullin told the “Ruthless Podcast” in a clip released Thursday morning. “Most of them came over and claimed asylum, gave a fake name. Some of them we caught, but a lot of them came in and … the Biden administration was just cutting them loose.”

Mullin did not say which terrorist organizations the detained illegal immigrants were affiliated with, but the Trump administration has designated cartels and gangs including Tren de Aragua, Sinaloa Cartel, and MS-13 as terrorist organizations. Those groups are active in Latin American countries where a high percentage of illegal immigrants originate. 

Mullin’s comments to the “Ruthless Podcast” are backed by a 2024 House Judiciary Committee report, which revealed that the Biden-Harris administration released at least 99 illegal aliens on the terror watchlist into American communities. The report also identified at least three illegal immigrants with potential ISIS ties who were released after using the administration’s CBP One app to arrive at a port of entry and be processed into the country.

In one instance, the Biden administration reportedly released an al-Shabaab terrorist who crossed the border illegally in 2023. It wasn’t until a year later that federal authorities realized the mistake and captured the Somali terrorist in Minnesota. Mullin revealed that Biden’s DHS released 97% of the individuals it encountered within 27 hours. 

A former senior Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) official told the committee, according to the 2024 report, that the Biden-Harris open-border policies made it more difficult for ICE to arrest national security threats in the United States.

Mullin attributed his department’s ability to arrest over 2,000 terrorists to President Donald Trump’s aggressive strategy. 

“One directive we had is we’re no longer just playing defense,” Mullin said. “We’re on the offense. President Trump has given us the authority to go on the offensive. For instance, cybersecurity. We’re no longer sitting there and just protecting you as you try to attack us. We’re swimming upstream now. We’re going after the people that are coming after us. We’re aggressively going after individuals. I want to put you on offense.”

Just before the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks, Mullin vowed to “dedicat[e] our lives to eternal vigilance so that we will never see a terrorist attack like that on American soil ever again.”