Drones Carrying Explosives Are Latest Threat to US Border Security: Sen. Chuck Grassley

Senate Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) speaks in Washington on March 22, 2022. Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

After a group of Republican senators revealed that some illegal border crossers were caught with explosives that were “tailor-made for terrorism,” Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) is sounding the alarm on the potential national security threat posed by bomb-carrying drones.

“It’s an absolute fact that our southern border is out of control,” Mr. Grassley wrote in a letter to Steven Dettelbach, director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), which was viewed by The Epoch Times.

Mr. Grassley sent similar letters to other agencies, including U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) unit.

The Republican senator then pointed to the use of weaponized drones by Mexican cartels to carry out violent attacks against rivals and to track the movements of U.S. law enforcement officers.

“These drones are used by the cartels to carry out targeted assassinations and violent attacks by dropping explosives in Mexico, monitor and gain reconnaissance on the movements of U.S. Border Patrol agents and other U.S. law enforcement officers, and track the progress of their smugglers illegally crossing into the U.S.,” Mr. Grassley wrote.

He then pointed to the use of armed drones by Hamas operatives in their Oct. 7 attacks on Israeli communities that killed some 1,400 people, mostly civilians.

“The horrific attacks by Hamas terrorists against the people of Israel and their use of weaponized drones to deploy explosives further highlight the need to secure the U.S. border from these types of national security threats,” Mr. Grassley wrote.

An Israeli soldier displays military equipment and ammunition that Hamas terrorists used at the time of the attack on Israel, in Kiryat Malakhi, Israel, on Oct. 20, 2023. Amir Levy/Getty Images

Besides Hamas terrorists using bomb-dropping drones in their attacks on Israeli communities, Lebanon’s Hezbollah said Thursday that it had used two drones packed with explosives to attack an Israeli army command position along the border between Lebanon and Israel.

Hezbollah, which the U.S. has designated as a terrorist organization, has been exchanging fire with Israeli forces along the Lebanese-Israeli border since Israel declared war on Hamas and began bombarding targets in Gaza.

Iran-backed militias have also reportedly increased their attacks against U.S. forces in the Middle East in light of U.S. backing for its ally Israel in the conflict.

Mr. Grassley said there have been reports that Hamas and Hezbollah operatives could seek to enter the United States across the porous U.S.-Mexico border and carry out attacks on U.S. soil.

“Recent reports warning of the risk that Hamas and Hezbollah fighters could soon attempt to enter the U.S. through Mexico illustrates the immediate necessity to secure our southern border,” he wrote, while asking the ATF chief to provide an account of the types of weapons that the agency has seized at the southern border and disclose whether any of them have been linked to terrorist organizations.

Terror Threat Rises

Since Hamas terrorists attacked Israeli communities several weeks ago, terror threats to the United States have increased, according to U.S. lawmakers and officials, including the head of the FBI.

“The reality is that the terrorism threat has been elevated throughout 2023, but the ongoing war in the Middle East has raised the threat of an attack against Americans in the United States to a whole other level,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said Tuesday at a Congressional hearing.

Mr. Wray said that the FBI’s most immediate worry was that homegrown violent extremists would draw inspiration from the Hamas terror attack on Israeli civilians and carry out attacks against Americans going about their daily lives.

A group of four Republican senators who recently visited the U.S.-Mexico border said in recent days that they’re concerned that President Joe Biden’s “open border policy” would open the country to terror attacks.

Illegal immigrants jump over the barbed wire fence into the United States from Mexico, in Eagle Pass, Texas, on Aug. 25, 2023. Suzanne Cordeiro/AFP via Getty Images

Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), one of the four senators who traveled to the southern border last week, told a press conference in Washington that Border Patrol agents caught illegal border crossers who were carrying improvised explosive devices the “size of cannonballs” that were “tailor-made for terrorism.”

And now, Mr. Grassley has added his voice to the growing tide of concern about terror threats to the United States.

“The recent heinous attacks by Hamas terrorists, who used arms and explosive-rigged drones against Israeli civilians, underscores the very real risk that could happen at our southern border and against Americans,” he wrote in the letter to the ATF chief.

Meanwhile, in his warning to lawmakers that the terror threat to the United States had risen amid the Israel-Hamas conflict, the head of the FBI revealed that Iran tried to hire assassins to murder U.S. government officials on American territory.

“As the world’s largest state-sponsor of terrorism, the Iranians, for instance, have directly, or by hiring criminals, mounted assassination attempts against dissidents and high-ranking current and former U.S. government officials, including right here on American soil,” he said.