Washington, D.C. (August 17, 2021) – A new article from the Center for Immigration Studies highlights Europol’s European Union Terrorism Situation and Trend Report 2021 (TESAT), a valuable source for U.S. homeland authorities contending with a mass-migration crisis. The just-published TESAT report documents that perpetrators of five completed terrorist mainland attacks (out of 10) during 2020 had “entered the EU as asylum seekers or irregular migrants”. Other immigrant border-crossing terrorist infiltrators struck the United Kingdom after smuggling in through the Channel Tunnel or across the North Atlantic last year.

Still more violent Islamist jihadists who used the long-haul illegal immigration routes over European borders got caught just before they could kill or with unknown intentions. Some tried to hide their illegal foreign terrorist group activities and wartime atrocity resumes under cover afforded by Europe’s asylum system, the TESAT report said. In all, completed and foiled jihadist attacks totaled 29 for the year, with European law enforcement arresting 254 people for “jihadism-related offenses”.

Bensman, the Center’s senior national security fellow, said, “All concern among Europe’s leadership and professional security class stands in sharp contrast to Biden administration officials, who seem impervious to European experience as they open the southern border gates to unscreened multitudes of strangers from around the world who also cannot really be vetted.”

What’s happening in Europe should matter to U.S. border security because many who are reaching Texas, California, and Arizona hail from the same jihadist-plagued nations from which Europe’s terrorist-immigrants departed, including Syria, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia, Bangladesh, Tajikistan, and Afghanistan, not to mention Yemenis on the FBI’s terrorism watch list. A fast-expanding percentage of the 200,000 immigrants per month are not from Central America or Mexico. Most apply for U.S. asylum relief from deportation, as did most of Europe’s terrorist immigrants.