FBI Director Kash Patel says there’s been a “sharp increase of known or suspected terrorists” entering the United States from Canada.
Patel was responding to a comment from Republican Congress Kevin Kiley, who asked about risks of terrorism. Patel claimed that since he became the helm of the bureau there has been a significant drop of terrorists coming from the south border. He claims there has been a significant increase from the north border however.
Patel says “What I’m trying to do is work with our northern border states, and our inter-agency, to tackle that problem.”
He then explained how it is impossible to seal off a border of that size, and that they’ll need to put resources into that.
FBI Director Kash Patel
Earlier in the meeting, he said “we need more focus on the northern border” to keep terrorists from entering. He then implied that they are originally coming from the Mideast, China, Russia and Africa.
U.S. Border Data
According to U.S. customs data, there were about 250 people with terrorism-related records crossing into the United States from Canada. This tracks from the start of their fiscal year until July 2025.
However, according to the same data, there were just under 2000 people with similar records crossing from the southern border.
U.S customs data recorded a total of 2,216 terrorism-related encounters in that time frame. This is a major difference between the previous fiscal year, being 410 encounters.
