Elon Musk warned that the sheer number of illegal immigrants entering the United States in recent months could trigger “something far worse” than the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
According to a report published on March 4 by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), a Washington-based think tank, the Biden administration “is responsible for almost invisibly importing by air 320,000 aliens with no legal right to enter the United States” since late 2022.
The effort is part of the administration’s “lawful pathways” strategy to reduce the number of illegal crossings at the southern border, according to the report penned by Todd Bensman, a senior national security fellow at the CIS. That information was obtained by CIS under a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees federal immigration efforts.
“The countries whose citizens are eligible are Cuba, Haiti, Venezuela, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Colombia, and Ecuador,” he wrote.
The U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) told CIS that revealing information about the airports that were used would disclose “operational vulnerabilities that could be exploited by bad actors altering their patterns of conduct, adopting new methods of operation, and taking other countermeasures, thereby undermining CBP’s law enforcement efforts to secure the United States borders,” according to the organization.
In recent years, Mr. Musk has been outspoken against the Biden administration’s border policies, namely after he visited the southern border in September and revealed he saw “pretty extreme” numbers of people illegally entering the U.S. In a live stream from the Texas town of Eagle Pass, he told viewers that he saw a man entering the United States with teardrop tattoos on his face.
Over the years, there have been rumors that gang members and members of prison gangs receive a teardrop tattoo near their eye for every person they have allegedly murdered. Mr. Musk referred to this, saying that it “means they have murdered someone and they are so proud of having murdered someone that they tattoo one tear on their face for every one person that they killed.”
In another instance this year, the X owner referred to reports of a yellow school bus being used to transport illegal immigrants near Brooklyn’s James Madison High School.
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Mr. Musk’s comments come amid a legal battle over a Texas law that would allow state law enforcement officials to arrest illegal immigrants in the state. After an appeals court last month allowed the law to be enforced, the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday placed the law on a temporary hold while it considers whether to take up the case.
The law, known as SB4, was set to go into effect on Saturday following a ruling from the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which blocked a lower court’s decision to halt it.
Republican Gov. Greg Abbott signed the law in December as part of a series of measures that he says are aimed at preventing a significant number of illegal immigrants from entering his state. Earlier this year, the Supreme Court issued a ruling that allowed federal agents to remove the razor wire that the Abbott administration had installed near Eagle Pass. Additionally, a lower court blocked Texas from installing floating barriers in the Rio Grande to prevent people from crossing illegally.
Several Republican governors have backed Mr. Abbott’s efforts, saying the federal government is not doing enough to enforce existing immigration laws.
In fiscal year 2023, CBP recorded nearly 3.2 million illegal crossings nationwide, the highest annual total on record.
