Since President Trump took office in January, Border Patrol agents have apprehended 307 Iranian nationals attempting to enter the United States illegally. Every single one has been transferred to ICE for detention, prosecution, or removal. Not one has been released into the American interior.
Under the Biden administration, 1,500 Iranian nationals were apprehended at the southern border between 2021 and 2024. Seven hundred and twenty-nine of them were released into the United States on their own recognizance.
America is currently engaged in active military operations against Iran. The Supreme Leader is dead. Iranian-linked sleeper cells were activated through secret transmission networks. Four terrorist attacks tied to radical Islamic ideology hit American soil in the past two weeks — including a Hezbollah sympathizer who drove a bomb-packed truck into a Detroit synagogue full of 140 children.
Those two sets of facts belong in the same sentence. Biden released 729 Iranian nationals into the American interior during the years Iran was actively building toward the conflict we are now fighting. Trump has detained every single one since January.
This is not a story about economic migrants making a desperate crossing. When DHS classifies a border crosser as a “special interest alien” — the formal designation applied to Iranian nationals — it means the department has identified them as potentially connected to terrorism or posing a specific national security risk. This is not a routine immigration category. It is a terrorism screening flag.
During the Biden administration, more than 73,000 special interest aliens were encountered at the southern border. The administration’s catch-and-release policies did not distinguish between economic migrants and individuals carrying that designation. They were processed and released into communities across the country with court dates that a significant percentage never appeared for.
Seven hundred and twenty-nine of those released individuals came from Iran — a country the State Department has designated as the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism for decades.
Here is the figure that should be generating far more attention than it currently is.
The Trump administration is actively trying to locate approximately 18,000 known or suspected terrorists released into the United States in recent years — individuals from Iran and other high-risk regions who entered during the Biden era and are now somewhere inside the country. During an active war with Iran. With the FBI intercepting what it describes as operational signals from Iranian-linked networks suggesting sleeper cell activation.
The administration has the authority and the will to find them. What it does not have is a functioning DHS — because Senate Democrats have kept the department in a partial shutdown since February 14th, with TSA staffing strained, hundreds of officers having quit, and operational resources diverted from enforcement to basic payroll management.
The people who voted to defund DHS four times in the last month also voted, during their four years in power, to release 729 Iranian nationals into the American interior. Those are not separate policy failures. They are the same policy failure, expressed across different years.
There is an honest complication in this story worth acknowledging. Iran does not have a repatriation agreement with the United States, which means the administration cannot simply deport detained Iranian nationals directly home. The solution being used: third-country deportation agreements with at least 24 nations who have established arrangements with the U.S. to accept deportees.
It is slower than a direct removal. It requires diplomatic coordination. And it means some detained Iranians are held for extended periods while the logistics are arranged. This is a real operational challenge — and the Trump administration is navigating it.
What it is not doing is releasing them into Kansas City while they wait.
The Temple Israel attack in Michigan was carried out by a man who came to America legally in 2011, was naturalized under Obama in 2016, and radicalized after his brothers were killed by an Israeli airstrike. He was not on any watchlist. He was not flagged as a special interest alien. He bought fireworks at a strip mall and drove to a synagogue.
The 729 Iranian nationals Biden released into the interior are an additional variable in that equation — people who arrived illegally, were flagged by DHS’s own terrorism screening criteria, and were released anyway. Some percentage of them have almost certainly complied with every legal requirement and harbor no harmful intentions. The honest answer is that nobody knows the breakdown — because the Biden administration didn’t make finding out a priority.
Trump’s administration is trying to account for 18,000 people the previous administration lost track of. During a war. With a partially defunded DHS. That is the homeland security picture in full — and it is a picture that every American deserves to see clearly.
