By Todd Bensman as published October 14, 2024 by the Center for Immigration Studies
To little fanfare, the US Department of Homeland Security on October 2 published the Homeland Threat Assessment 2025, a forward-looking warning to the American people of potential death, destruction, and other harms that may befall us in the coming new year, risk rising or falling on who wins the US presidential election.
These documents are never a happy meal. But in representing the aggregated, peer-reviewed opinions of professional U.S. government intelligence community analysts, who spend their days reading classified threat reporting, the assessments serve the important public service function of ringing the alarm bell about coming public safety threats.
Terrorist Infiltration a Top Threat
Despite a light partisan tint to their report, the assessors nevertheless had the politically explosive terrorist border infiltration threat out there front and center for a second year. It used much the same tone and language as did the 2024 DHS I&A threat assessment, which noted record numbers of border-crossers on the U.S. terrorist watchlist, and warned for the first time for one of these reports that “terrorists and criminal actors may exploit the elevated flow and increasingly complex security environment to enter the United States.”
The new assessment sounded the terrorist border infiltration threat warning loud and clear again, despite noting that watch-listed terrorist suspects declined from 216 border crossers during the first six months of 2023 to 139 for the same time frame in 2024 amid an overall decline in illegal border crossings since December (more on that below).
“Individuals with terrorism connections are interested in using established travel routes and perceived permissive environments to facilitate their access to the United States,” the assessment offers high up in the report, referring readers to its “Border and Immigration Security” section for more starting on page 13. It says there that, “Over the next year, we expect some individuals with terrorism ties and some criminal actors will continue their efforts to exploit migration flows and the complex border security environment to enter the United States.”
This year’s report warned about the northern border too, although it did not mention the joint FBI-Royal Canadian Mounted Police investigation that just recently thwarted a Pakistani jihadist plot to illegally cross the border southward into New York to slaughter Jews praying during this year’s High Holy Days services. (See: Meanwhile at the Northern Border, a Jihadist Attack in New York is Thwarted)
Many who illegally cross the northern border into the United States, a comparatively sharp influx noted in the assessment, appear to be from the population that Canada has been importing from around the world as part of a massive legal immigration program.
The unmentioned Pakistani caught before he could cross the border illegally and attack New York was one of them.
Predictions Hinge on Election and Mexico’s Migrant Crackdown
The assessment correctly notes that illegal southern land border crossings between ports of entry are way down from their record level in December 2023, “though remain high compared to pre-pandemic historical trends.”
The analysts attribute this slowdown in illegal crossings, without elaboration, to “increased Mexican enforcement” that began in December 2023. The assessment provides official government confirmation of the dramatic impacts resulting from a diplomatic deal that President Joe Biden struck that Christmas season with Mexico. The deal had Mexico mount an aggressive, sustained nationwide migration crackdown that involved, among other disruption operations, the deployment of 32,000 troops to conduct mass roundups of migrants in the country’s north for “internal deportation” to Mexico’s southern states, where the migrants are bottled up.
In acknowledging Mexico’s key role in dramatically and quickly reducing illegal border crossings, the assessment does not, of course, reference CIS, which was first to report this US-induced Mexican operation on January 17, again on February 13, and thereafter, all alone for far too many months. Nor does the report note that this appears to be an administration gambit to clear the border of politically problematic visuals for the Democrats ahead of the November 5 presential election.
(As for its partisan tint, the threat assessment also credits the slow-down to Biden-Harris administration asylum policy changes that were not implemented until June 2024, long after the Mexican crackdown had already driven the numbers to current lower rates).
So What Might Happen in 2025?
The government assessment warns of “fluctuations” or “influxes” that may occur due to “a change in administration” and the resulting “real or perceived changes in US or regional immigration policy” (read, a lifting or continuation of Mexico’s crackdown) that depend on the November 5 election outcome.
“Over the next year, we expect migrant reactions to real or perceived changes in both US and regional immigration policies to influence some potential migrants’ decisions to attempt irregular entry into the United States,” the assessment noted, in what I read as a reference to a Kamala Harris victory.
But on the other hand, an oblique but obvious reference is made to a Donald Trump win after which immigrants could no longer expect the Biden-Harris administration’s quick-releases into the country, nor access to the CBP One mobile phone app program, which has allowed hundreds of thousands of intending border-crossers to instead schedule appointments with U.S. Customs and Border Protection to enter the country “legally” at ports of entry for two-year renewable periods.
The assessment predicts they might rush the U.S. border during the November 5-January 20 power transition.
“In July, some US-bound migrants told news media that they hoped to reach the US-Mexico border before the 2024 election, perceiving that a change in administration [to Donald Trump] might result in border closures and the end of CBP One appointments,” the assessment noted.
Mexico-based cartels referred to as “transnational criminal organizations,” will “almost certainly continue to smuggle irregular migrants across the US-Mexico border.
Higher-Potency Fentanyl Will Keep Killing Americans
Current U.S. policies intended to suppress the record-high smuggling of fentanyl into Mexico for pill production and then over the U.S. border are not working, the assessment indicates, and will not likely reduce American deaths during 2025.
“Criminal actors and criminal drug manufacturers are responding to increased US and partner nation efforts targeting the precursor chemicals needed for fentanyl production by modifying existing chemicals and substituting different chemicals in their drug compositions,” it concluded, in part. “Criminals are also adapting their smuggling methods to circumvent US customs regulations aimed at blocking the import of these chemicals and drug manufacturing equipment into the United States.”
Fentanyl smuggling and seizures are going to remain high into 2025 and the Sinaloa Cartel and New Generation Jalisco cartels – the two primary smugglers of fentanyl and other dangerous drugs into the United States – will continue sourcing their product from China-based firms using new additives making Fentanyl 10 times more potent.
“These addictive, inexpensive fentanyl combinations and alternatives increasingly contribute to overdoes in the Homeland.”
Lots More Labor- and Sex-Trafficking Too
The assessment undoubtedly leaves out much more than it includes on this subject, providing a mere four paragraphs.
It does not, for instance, mention an August 2024 DHS Office of Inspector General investigation, which found that DHS agencies lost track of 448,000 unaccompanied minors who crossed the border from 2019 to 2023 and were quickly processed through to placement with sponsors inside the United States. The investigation found that this was out of line with laws requiring that such children are protected from traffickers and others who want to victimize them in criminal, harmful or exploitative activity.
While losing track of 448,000 processed children doesn’t mean all fell prey to sex traffickers or abusers, the 2025 threat assessment notes that sex trafficking networks Central and South America, Eastern Europe, and Asia operate throughout the United States, sexually abuse children, and will continue to do so in 2025.
They’ll use illicit massage parlors, bars, nightclubs and private brothels, as well as online commercial sex websites to exploit women and children alike next year, the assessment says. Much more could be said about real sex trafficking cases in Texas and other border states where young women and unaccompanied children are brought in for forced sex work.
Beyond the horrors of sex trafficking, forced labor at private residences or businesses is a “rapidly evolving threat in the Homeland that victimizes vulnerable populations while often posing minimal risk to traffickers,” the report states.
Concluding Thoughts
The 2025 assessment is no happy meal about the border, let alone all the other domestic and international threats out there facing the country.
It leaves out much that could have been said about the border threats it does discuss.
It sometimes it follows political talking points, such as the easily debunked political contention that immigrants travel based on misinformation spread by human smugglers, when they instead listen to friends and family who just successfully crossed. (See: Biden DHS Blames Migrant Crisis on Cartel ‘Disinformation’ That the Border Is ‘Open’)
But the assessment has value in that you can tell the analysts managed to slip into the public realm some of the real stuff about terrorist infiltration, failed fentanyl suppression policies, and the ongoing scourge of sex trafficking.