About 2 million people, including thousands of Americans, are on the federal government's terror watchlist, CBS News reported.
The list has nearly doubled in the past six years, with millions of migrants illegally crossing the U.S. southern border under the Biden administration.
The news comes little more than a week after FBI Director Christopher Wray told a Senate committee that the threat of extremist violence on U.S. soil was at a "whole other level" since the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel.
"We live in a time of persistent terrorist, nation-state, and criminal threats to our national security, our economy, and indeed our communities," Wray told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Dec. 5
CBS News, citing court records, government documents, and interviews with more than a dozen current and former intelligence community leaders, reported Thursday that the consolidated Terrorist Screening Dataset (TSD) contains the names of approximately 2 million people the government considers known or suspected terrorists.
When TSD launched on Dec. 1, 2003, the terror list included about 120,000 people. By the time of the last publicly confirmed list in 2017, it swelled to 1,160,000. In addition, the list has nearly doubled in the past six years.
"It doesn't mean they're a terrorist," Russ Travers, a U.S. intelligence community veteran told CBS News. "It means there's something that has led a department or agency to say, 'This person needs a closer look.'"
Intelligence community insiders told the media outlet that the government considers it vital to rely on the watchlist as part of its "early warning system."
Agents must have "reasonable suspicion" to put a person on the watchlist, though the government does not disclose what those suspicions are based on. Officials also neither confirm nor deny if an individual is on the list.
"Those 2 million people who are on the list are on there for a reason," National Security Council member Monte Hawkins told CBS News.
Hawkins added that "a vast majority" of those listed are not U.S. citizens or legal permanent residents, the outlet said.
National security officials told CBS News that some names listed on the TSD probably should be removed — due to deaths, people being confused others, etc. — but an audit of every person's file is unrealistic due to lack of staffing.