My life before Congress was still dedicated to public service, but it looked far different. For 23 years, I wasn’t in a suit and tie — I was targeting cells in Asia, war criminals in Bosnia, and radical terrorist groups in the Middle East as a commander with SEAL Team Six. On Sept. 11, 2001, I was leading Navy SEAL/BUDS training, selecting and perfecting the warriors who would go on to fight in the Global War on Terrorism and root out terrorists from the darkest corners of the globe. I then went on to serve as the deputy and acting commander of Joint Special Forces in Iraq. Long story short, if there’s one thing that fighting on the front lines of freedom has taught me, it’s how terrorists operate.
Lesson one: Terrorists take advantage of chaos.
I’ve seen this threat increase here at home as chaos rages at the border. Through the deliberate dismantling of border security and loosening of legal immigration, President Joe Biden has created an environment that terrorist organizations such as Hamas or the Islamic State group could only dream of.
When Hamas terrorists struck Israel and created migration chaos in Gaza and the greater region, Biden’s response was to consider opening up asylum to Palestinians, which could allow Hamas to infiltrate our country with refugees. It is well documented that Hamas uses migration chaos and open borders to embed their fighters in foreign nations, and I have no doubt they have succeeded in establishing sleeper cells in the United States.
When Biden took office in January 2021, he wasted no time signing executive orders that dismantled the secure border that he inherited from the first Trump administration. As a result, while Biden spent his presidency going on a record-breaking number of vacations, millions of completely unvetted migrants crossed our southern border and entered our country over the last four years. Border Patrol officials have encountered hundreds of terrorist suspects trying to cross the southern border, not counting the others who made their way in without detection.
But no more. President-elect Donald Trump has promised to deliver border security, and Congress will do its part to make it happen. Closing the border may be the easy part, though, identifying and rooting out the terrorist elements will be the challenge.
Lesson two: Terrorists are patient and strike vulnerable targets when you least expect it.
All the pieces for another devastating tragedy are on the ground and in play. The Department of Homeland Security has identified, for instance, over 400 migrants from Central Asia and elsewhere who illegally entered our country as part of an Islamic State group-affiliated human smuggling network — only 150 of whom have thus far been apprehended. In June 2024, six suspected terrorists with ties to the Islamic State group were also arrested in a sting operation in New York, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia.
Throughout all of this, the Biden administration has been asleep at the wheel despite several attempts from Congress to fix its mistakes. House Republicans passed H.R. 2, the most robust border security bill in history.
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We don’t know when and where they will strike next, but we do know they will never stop trying, ever. Trump needs the tools to secure our border, and he needs his national security A-team — Pete Hegseth as our defense secretary, Tulsi Gabbard as our director of national intelligence, Kristi Noem as our homeland security secretary, and Kash Patel as our FBI director — confirmed by the Senate on Day One.
It is only a matter of time before we see these possibly lethal assailants strike. Thankfully, Inauguration Day is right around the corner. During Trump’s first term, he all but eradicated the Islamic State group, and the crisis at the border was nearly over. Our enemies feared us, our adversaries respected us, and would-be terrorists knew that an attack on America was a death sentence. Monday cannot come soon enough.
Ryan Zinke is a representative for Montana’s 1st Congressional District. He is a retired U.S. Navy SEAL officer and former interior secretary under President Donald Trump.