Gorka: Todd, it’s like the story was memory hold weeks ago, about Yemenis crossing into America illegally, who are on the terror watch list. What happened to that story? Did it turn out to be a case of mistaken identity?
Bensman: No, it turned out to be a real story. Yemenis crossed into California, got caught in Calexico, two different instances, two or three months apart. And the CPB press office released an official statement on it. The statement didn’t last long; it was pulled down but not for accuracy. That was a real story. Those Yemenis crossed, and they would be in the custody of ICE. Recently, we were able to get an update because Congressman Tom Tiffany, far from the southern border, was curious enough to ask FBI Director Chris Wray for an update. And Wray said there was an active investigation and that’s why he couldn’t talk in a public setting. I was glad to hear that. I was comforted to know they still had those guys and that they have a case going.
Gorka: Yes but how many other cases are there like this? The question I have of the man who literally wrote the book, America’s Covert Border War, The Untold Story of the Nation’s Battle to Prevent Jihadist Infiltration… terrorists aren’t necessarily very stupid, are they Todd?
Bensman: Of course not.
Gorka: So when they see an influx of 190,000 economic immigrants cross the border in certainly highly trafficked places, are they going to cross the border there?
Bensman: They’re going to certainly regard those migrants around them as great camouflage and they’re certainly going to look at what those migrants are doing to border control systems ahead of them, meaning overwhelm, overrun and collapse them. And they’re going to see those places as a great place to cross. That’s the way that works.
Gorka: When my parents escaped a communist dictatorship, as true refugees – not economic migrants – they had to stay in a refugee camp and were interrogated – interrogated, Todd – for weeks on end, six weeks of interrogations, to convince the counterintelligence professional that they didn’t pose a counter-intelligence threat to the country that was going to accept them as refugees. Can we physically even do that with 190,000 illegals a month.
Bensman: No, of course not. I have to take some comfort in the fact that they do appear to be interrogating these two Yemenis and hopefully that they catch the next Yemenis who are on a terrorism watch list. That is part of America’s covert border war, called the near war, which is where the FBI goes into the detention facilities and conducts real investigations, interviews these guys face to face, go through their pocket trash. They found a sim card hidden in the insole of a shoe of one of them, a guy who also was on the No Fly list, which means that guy is probably very dangerous. I don’t know what else is happening with those Yemenis but undoubtedly they will be deported after we’re finished with them.
Gorka: As an individual with a background in intelligence and counterterrorism, I have to ask you, how concerned are you that this literal open border policy, which will probably see two million illegal aliens cross our border this year… how concerned are you that this could lead to terror attacks on the US homeland?
Bensman: I take my cues from the European experience of the last six years, when the Europeans experienced a mass-migration crisis that collapsed all of their border management systems, and ISIS purposefully sent in trained operatives among them who were posing as war refugees and victims of persecution. And then they conducted the Paris attacks and Brussels attacks and then one attack after another, after another, for six years straight. So I don’t think it’ll go quite like that because all of those immigrants were from Middle Eastern countries, Muslim-majority countries with terrorism problems. But we have our share of people from those countries coming through the Darien Gap right now in massive numbers. The main numbers just came out as a 700 percent increase this May over the prior May. They are coming in from countries well beyond Spanish-speaking countries and quite a few are coming in from places like Pakistan, Somalia, and Syria, Iraq and the rest of those countries.
Gorka: It’s just obvious, if you’re a terrorist, you’re going to use them as cover. You’re going to use those hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens as cover for nefarious purposes against our nation.