The Biden administration allowed 18,000 known or suspected terrorists into the United States, and U.S. officials still don’t know how many terrorists may have crossed the open southern border as gotaways.
The unknown nature of migrants and terrorists who entered the country under Joe Biden is “the No. 1 threat that we have right now,” a top counterterrorism official told the House Homeland Security Committee as part of a hearing on worldwide threats.
Joe Kent, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, said they represent a “persistent” threat inside the country. Mainstream media largely ignored the alarming statistics and Kent’s testimony last week amid the hostile questioning by Democratic lawmakers and the political theater that unfolded during the Committee’s annual threats meeting.
“The No. 1 threat that we have right now in my view is the fact that we don’t know who came into our country in the last four years of Biden’s open borders,” Kent testified at the hearing.
The Trump administration has estimated between 15 and 20 million migrants entered the country during the Biden administration through a combination of illegal border crossings, asylum cases, and other humanitarian and parole programs.
In addition, the unvetted illegal aliens came from countries and territories around the world, including many that are hostile to the United States, such as China, Iran, Gaza, and Venezuela.
“We just recently put out a warning… of the heightened risk of terrorist attacks posed to the homeland by terrorists, pretty much of all stripes, but in particular from ISIS and from al Qaeda,” Kent explained.
During a recent interview with Fox News, United States Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard highlighted the dangerous terrorists hiding in America.
“It points to the heightened domestic threat that we face that is not often talked about or addressed but obviously because of the recent tragedy has really come into focus,” Gabbard said. “…This is what we’re focused on working with the Department of Homeland to identify them and deport them to prevent any further attacks here at home.”
Kent said roughly 2,000 of the 18,000 are Afghan “refugees” who were allowed entry into the U.S. by the Biden administration under Operation Allies Welcome, the Daily Wire reported. Not all of the 88,000 Afghans who entered under that operation have been examined yet, so that number could rise.
“That is probably the top terrorist threat that we face right now and that doesn’t include the individuals that came here illegally through the open border, that number alarmingly remains unknown at this time,” Kent said. “We’re trying to figure out who those individuals are as well.”
The White House’s Rapid Response 47 X account also shared a clip of Kent’s testimony.
.@NCTCKent: "So far, NCTC has identified around 18,000 known and suspected terrorists that the Biden administration let come into our country." pic.twitter.com/XPrHdKMICK
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) December 11, 2025
Kent pointed to the recent shooting by an Afghan national who targeted two National Guard soldiers in Washington, D.C., last month, killing one of them. He said the Biden administration sidestepped normal vetting procedures for the refugees.
“The Biden administration essentially used his tactical-level vetting as a ruse to bring him here,” Kent said.
Rahmanullah Lakanwal, who was living in Washington state with his wife and five children, was charged in the pre-Thanksgiving Day shooting attack near the White House. He worked with a CIA-backed counterterrorism unit and was admitted to the U.S. as part of President Biden’s airlift of Afghans in 2021.
“That Afghan was brought into the country as a group of over 100,000 Afghans who were brought here during the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan,” Kent said. “These individuals, despite what has been reported, were not vetted properly to come into the United States.”
The number of people with terrorist or extremist ties could be much higher, as the 18,000 are just the ones the National Counterterrorism Center has been able to identify so far, The Washington Times reported.
Kent suggested that others are not even on the government’s radar and could be living among us in communities across the country, particularly the gotaways who illegally crossed the U.S. border but evaded capture by Border Patrol.
Known or suspected terrorists, or KSTs, are people the government has linked either directly to terrorist activities or deemed associates of those who are terrorists. Kent said they would have been blocked under normal immigration procedures.
“These are individuals who, under normal circumstances, would never be allowed to enter our country because of their ties to jihadi groups like ISIS and Al-Qaeda,” Kent said in a full statement. “Yet the Biden administration not only let them into the country and in many cases facilitated their entry.”
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem shared Kent’s concerns, but Democrats quickly used it as an opportunity to point the blame at the Trump administration.
Rep. Bennie G. Thompson, the top Democrat on the committee, questioned Noem about Lakanwal’s asylum being approved this year, under the Trump administration.
The secretary wouldn’t give a direct answer. Instead, she said the rules used to adjudicate his application were established during the Biden administration, The Washington Times reported.
Noem drew further criticism from Democrats when she left the hearing just after noon. Thompson moved to subpoena her to demand that she reappear under compulsion, but it was defeated in a 13-12 party-line vote.
The Biden administration gave $14 billion to Islamist organizations and terrorist entities worldwide, and it opened the door for terrorists both from Islamic and other third-world countries to settle in communities.
The FBI discovered one of the Oct. 7 jihadis living in Louisiana this year, with a fraudulent visa that the Biden administration granted to him.
