A United States House Judiciary Committee report says 99 noncitizens on the “terrorist watchlist” were released in the country. Is this true?

Claudia Tenney, a member of the US House of Representatives, recently claimed that people on the watchlist were “let loose” in the US. The claim came as part of her argument against New York State’s law that grants driver’s licenses to New Yorkers regardless of their immigration status.

“New York is one of the worst,” the Republican representative said on Fox News. “We had almost 99 people, I think, or 100 people, on the terror watchlist just let loose. That’s the ones we know of.”

Tenney, whose congressional district includes more than a dozen counties along the shores of Lake Ontario, which shares borders with Canada, also claimed that people who appear on the list can get licenses.

We will focus on her claim that 99 or 100 immigrants who appear on the “terror watchlist” were “let loose.”.

What does US CBP data show?

US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers encounter citizens and noncitizens at the border who have “terrorism-related” records, including those from the government’s Terrorist Screening Dataset. This list contains names of people who are known or suspected to have ties to “terrorism,” though critics say the list is overly broad, containing two million names. It contains not just suspicious people but also people connected to them.

Noncitizens who try to cross the border at land ports of entry and match a “terrorism” record “are most commonly found inadmissible to our country and immediately repatriated or removed,” according to CBP. They could also be turned over to another government agency for enforcement action.

If CBP officers encounter them after they have entered the country without being screened, “these noncitizens are most commonly detained and removed or turned over to another government agency for subsequent detention and law enforcement action, as appropriate.”.

Data from fiscal year 2024, which ended on September 30, shows that there were 410 encounters with all people who matched in ‘terrorism’ records, which could include US citizens, at ports of entry.

“Encounters” could represent multiple attempts by the same person to cross the border. This represents a small fraction of the 2.9 million total enforcement encounters at the border that year. Since 2022, most of these encounters occurred at the US-Canada border.  In 2024, 358 of these encounters occurred at the northern border and 52 at the southwest border.

The agency also tracks encounters between ports of entry of noncitizens who match a “terrorism” record. There are far fewer of these, just 106 in the year that ended September 30, with 103 of those at the southwest border, and 13 from October 1 to January, all at the southwest border.

We contacted Tenney’s office to get evidence for her claim, but received no response.

What’s the basis for Tenney’s claims?

It is likely that Tenney’s source is a report released in August from the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee, chaired by Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio. The report cited “information provided” by the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS). However, it did not supply any other corroboration or details. It states at least 99 noncitizens who were matches on the “terrorist watchlist” were released into the US from 2021 to 2023.

An additional 34 immigrants from the list were in DHS custody. The report uses language to suggest that immigration authorities knew at the time of release that the noncitizens were on the list. The report states the 99 came from a pool of 250 noncitizens who tried to cross at the southern border and who were identified as being on the list. CBP statistics show 250 encounters with people on the watchlist during the years 2021 through 2023 at the southern border. There could be multiple encounters with the same person in those statistics.

The report notes other instances in which people on the list crossed undetected and were subsequently arrested, including the case of eight Tajik nationals with potential ties to the ISIL (ISIS) group who entered the country and were arrested in June. Their possible “terror” ties were not known when they crossed the border, according to NBC News.

A similar case involved an Uzbek man who stayed for two years without detection. Other examples involve migrants whose place on the watchlist was initially unverified.

The report also claims that immigration judges granted bonds to 27 migrants who appeared on a “terrorist watchlist” but came over the border between ports of entry from 2021 to 2023. However, the judges might not have known about the migrants’ status on the list, the report states.

Four others on the list were granted asylum. A Venezuelan citizen who was known by authorities to appear on the watchlist was released into the US over concerns about COVID-19 in detention facilities, according to government documents a reporter obtained.

So what’s the truth behind the claims that people on the ‘terror watchlist’ were released in the US?

Migrants with possible “terror” ties have been in the news recently.

There have also been at least two other reported cases where migrants should have been detained because they were on the “terrorist watchlist” but were not. NBC News reported in April about an Afghan migrant who was on the watchlist and released. He was arrested a year later in Texas, hours after the NBC report. The man was not held initially because border agents did not have enough information to corroborate his place on the list, the network reported.

The Daily Caller reported in 2024 about the release of a migrant whose name did not match a name on the watchlist. He was arrested nearly a year later, two days after authorities confirmed his ties to a Somali “terrorist” group.

A counterterrorism expert told PolitiFact that there is no credible reporting that any kind of state, local, or federal “catch and release” program involving known or suspected “terrorists,” known as KSTs, exists.

“In contrast, if a KST is apprehended at the border or elsewhere, they will be either prosecuted [if part of a designated foreign terrorist organization] or removed from the country and sent to their country of origin,” said Jason M. Blazakis, director of the Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey, California.

Blazakis questioned the House Judiciary Committee report’s accuracy, stating that it lacks specifics.

The “terrorist watchlist” is broad and can include many people who do not pose an immediate threat, said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council.

“That is not to say that there are not people on that list who do pose a serious threat to the United States,” Reichlin-Melnick said. “But complaints about the list being too large and over-inclusive date back more than a decade.”

Releasing people known to be on the “terrorist watchlist” is not the policy of CBP. Tenney is correct that there are known cases of people who appear on the list who were released into the US. These cases largely involved people whose status on the list was not known to immigration authorities at the time they crossed the border.

The House Judiciary Committee released a report stating that there had been 99 noncitizens who appeared on the watchlist who were released into the US and suggested that immigration authorities knew of their status at that time. The report cited “information provided” by DHS, but the department has not confirmed the report. Because of this uncertainty, we are not rating this claim on our Truth-O-Meter.