An Afghan migrant on the terror watchlist was reportedly released into the United States in 2023 and then released again after being arrested last month.
Mohammad Kharwin, 48, is currently out on bond with no movement restrictions while he awaits an immigration hearing in Texas scheduled for 2025, reported NBC News.
Border Patrol agents first apprehended Kharwin in March of 2023 for unlawfully crossing the U.S.-Mexico. In March of 2024, he was released into the country again after an immigration judge deemed him not a national security threat, per NBC New York.
In the 2023 incident, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) could not verify his identity due to a lack of personal information, prompting the agency to release him into the country without informing other departments, according to the New York Post.
In February 2024, the FBI notified Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) of Kharwin’s potential terror ties. Soon after, ICE agents arrested Kharwin in San Antonio. An immigration judge then released Kharwin on bond after prosecutors failed to inform the judge about his ties to Hezb-e-Islami (HIG), a group allegedly responsible for terrorist attacks in Afghanistan between 2013 and 2015 that resulted in the deaths of at least nine American soldiers, per NBC New York.
Prosecutors told the judge that he should be detained without bond because he was a flight risk but failed to specify that he could also pose a national security threat.
Kharwin is reportedly a suspected member of HIG, which the U.S. government described as a “virulently anti-Western insurgent group.”
A CBP spokesperson addressed Kharwin’s release, saying the agency has never “knowingly” released a person on the terror watchlist into the country. The spokesperson claimed that “information in the record could not have provided a conclusive match” during authorities’ first encounter with the man.
“As soon as there was information to suggest that this individual was of concern, he was taken into custody by ICE. Law enforcement has been tracking the matter closely to protect against public safety risks,” the spokesperson said, per NBC News.
As previously reported by The Dallas Express, Gov. Greg Abbott has expressed increasing concern over the prospect of terrorists gaining access to the United States through the porous southern border amid record-high unlawful crossings in recent years.
“The chief job of the President of the United States is national security. President Biden is failing at national security. We are extraordinarily concerned about a terrorist attack occurring in Texas or elsewhere in the United States because the terrorists who are crossing our border will go unstopped,” Abbott said on Fox News last week.
