A former senior-ranking Border Patrol official claimed on Tuesday that the Biden-Harris administration prevented him from releasing “any information” regarding the increase in illegal immigrants with ties to terrorist organizations crossing the southern border. The former official said the Biden-Harris administration was “trying to convince the public there was no threat at the border.”
Former San Diego Border Patrol Sector Chief Agent Aaron Heitke testified about the Biden-Harris administration’s role in the southern border crisis during a Homeland Security Committee hearing on Tuesday, saying, “In San Diego, we had an exponential increase in significant interest aliens (SIA). These are aliens with significant ties to terrorism.”
Heitke claimed that before the Biden-Harris administration, the San Diego border sector only averaged 10 to 15 significant interest alien arrests each year. However, he explained that “once word was out the border was far easier to cross,” the sector had over 100 significant interest alien arrests in 2022, “well over that” in 2023, and “even more than that registered this year.” Heitke also warned that the numbers in his report were “only the ones we caught.”
“At the time, I was told I could not release any information on this increase in SIAs or mention any of the arrests,” Heitke told the Homeland Security Committee. “The administration was trying to convince the public there was no threat at the border.”
Heitke also highlighted the issue of fentanyl smuggling across the southern border. The former Border Patrol official told lawmakers that between 80 and 90 percent of the fentanyl and methamphetamine seizures occur in the San Diego sector.
“With little enforcement at the border, these drugs were coming through en masse,” Heitke said. “During my last year in San Diego, the price for a single pill of fentanyl, for example, went from $10 to 25 cents.”
The former Border Patrol sector chief told the Homeland Security Committee that under the Biden-Harris administration, his sector was also forced to release “hundreds” of illegal immigrants each day into the United States.
“I had to release illegal aliens by the hundreds each day into communities who could not support them. To quiet the problem, two flights a week were provided from San Diego to Texas,” Heitke said. “These flights simply brought aliens who would have been released in San Diego over to Texas. Each flight cost approximately $150,000. This was the administration’s way to try to quiet the border-wide crisis.”
