Customs and Border Protection apprehended two Lebanese nationals at the southern border Thursday, the latest in a spree of Middle Eastern "special interest aliens" trying to cross this week alone, Fox News reported.
The apprehension of 19 Iranians and 17 Syrians — in addition to the Lebanese men — this week in one border sector alone comes amid fears over the possibility of a terrorist attack in the United States linked to last weekend's massacre in Israel carried out by the terrorist group Hamas.
Former Hamas leader Khaled Mashal earlier this week called for a global day of anger — for Friday — in support of the terrorists who laid siege to Israel.
The Lebanese SIAs, both in their 20s, are undergoing extensive vetting by the FBI, according to the report. DHS defines SIAs as "a non-U.S. person who, based on an analysis of travel patterns, potentially poses a national security risk to the United States or its interests."
They are 2 of 164 Lebanese nationals encountered by CBP from October 2021 through this point in October, according to the Fox News report. Further, CBP encountered 6,386 nationals from Afghanistan, 3,153 from Egypt, 659 from Iran and 538 from Syria, according to the report.
Both Hamas, which operates in Gaza, and Hezbollah, the terrorist group in Lebanon, are linked to and funded by Iran.
A Department of Homeland Security threat assessment last month warned that "terrorists and criminal actors may exploit the elevated flow and increasingly complex security environment to enter the United States."
Former CBP acting Commissioner Mark Morgan told Newsmax on Monday that the chaos of the surging number of illegal migrants flooding the United States southern border could hide incoming terrorist cells like the Hamas cells activated in last weekend's attacks in Israel.
"In the past 32 months, we've had 1.6 million 'got-aways' [at the southern border]," Morgan said. "[That is] 1.6 million got-aways that we know nothing about. The truth is, we could have a terrorist planning cell in the United States right now planning the next terrorist attack; we would have no idea."