The fear that Iran has planted sleeper terror cells or terrorists in the country appears to be well-founded.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement collared 11 Iranian illegal aliens during the weekend. One was an army sniper; another, a nation’s revolutionary guard with ties to a terrorist outfit. A third was a terror suspect.
The rest were the usual motley crew of thugs and criminals.
The arrest not only shows the acute national security peril of the Biden administration’s policy of importing millions of illegal aliens without vetting, but also the prescience of those who warned about it but were ignored.
The arrest followed closely Border Czar Tom Homan’s revelation to Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo that the Biden administration caught and released 1,272 Iranians who entered the country illegally.
“I’ve said in the last four years, my biggest concern was this open border,” Homan said. “It was the biggest national security vulnerability this country has ever seen.”
With the arrest of the 11 Iranians on June 22 and June 23, that vulnerability comes into focus.
Among the cultural enrichers ICE bagged this time is Ribvar Karimi, arrested in Locust, Alabama. “Karimi reportedly served as an Iranian Army sniper from 2018 to 2021 and at the time of his arrest, in his possession, he had an Islamic Republic of Iran Army identification card,” DHS reported:
He entered the U.S. on a K-1 visa, which is reserved for aliens engaged to be married to American citizens, in October 2024 under the Biden administration. Karimi never adjusted his status — a legal requirement — and is removable from the United States. He’s currently in ICE custody, where he’ll remain pending removal proceedings.
Another possible terrorist is Mehran Makari Saheli. ICE picked up the 56-year-old veteran of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, “with admitted connections to Hezbollah,” in St. Paul, Minnesota. He received a final order of deportation in 2022, but the Biden Administration didn’t deport him. This estimable individual has a conviction for being a felon in possession of a firearm.
So ICE arrested an Iranian sniper, an Iranian linked to the Hezbollah terror outfit, and one ”known or suspected terrorist.”
“Under Joe Biden, we had over 10 million people cross that border,” Homan told Bartiromo, including not just Iranians but Russians and Chinese. But as well, he added, 2 million are known gotaways — those who slipped by the Border Patrol.
“We don’t know who they are or where they came from, because they got away,” he continued.
And those gotaways don’t count the millions whom Biden unlawfully released.
As 10 retired FBI officials told Capitol Hill leaders in January last year, a “startling number” of the illegals are on terror watch list or are from terror-designated nations, the officials wrote, along with China and Russia.
“These men are potential operators in what appears to be an accelerated and strategic penetration, a soft invasion, designed to gain internal access to a country that cannot be invaded militarily in order to inflict catastrophic damage if and when enemies deem it necessary,” the officials said.
The Biden administration didn’t care.