UMATILLA, FL—Governor Ron DeSantis claimed that a terrorist attack on the United States is bound to happen, prompted by the millions of illegal immigrants that have crossed the Southern border in recent years.
"You've had 10, 11 million [immigrants] come in illegally since 2019...what are the odds that there will end up being a terror attack as a result? I think there will be," DeSantis said at a Tuesday morning press conference. "How could you have that many people and not have some people that are hostile?"
"If just 0.1 percent are bad that's gonna cause havoc," he added, seemingly claiming the law of averages. "From a security perspective, it's a big deal."
Between 2021 and February 2024, the House Committee on Homeland Security reported that there have been nine million immigrant encounters nationwide, 7.4 million of which occurred at the Southern border—a 121% increase. However, those are not all illegal encounters, though an estimated 1.8 million "gotaways" escaped during this period.
As for terrorism possibilities, the US Border Patrol in fiscal year 2023 encountered 172 known or suspected terrorists, including terrorist associates. So far this year, Bloomberg reports, Border Patrol has already encountered 81, which is up from 98 in all of 2022, 16 the year before, and just three in the two years before that (2020 and 2019). Compounding the issue, eight ISIS-tied terrorists crossed the Southern border last week before they were arrested.
These 2023 terrorist meetings, however, represent just 0.0083% of overall immigrant encounters at American borders. In 2019, they represented just 0.0004% of that year's encounters.
"We have angel parents...these are crimes that if you just had control of the border would not have happened," DeSantis said, referencing the increase of criminal noncitizen convictions year over year. According to Border Patrol, just 11 illegal immigrants were convicted of homicide or manslaughter in fiscal years 2017-2020 combined. In 2021, however, that number jumped to 60 and leaped again to 62 in 2022—though decreased to 29 last year.
So far in this fiscal year, there have already been 23 homicide or manslaughter convictions for these individuals.
"Any crimes that were committed would not have happened by definition," DeSantis continued.
In the past few years, the Republican supermajority Legislature has passed several controversially stringent, anti-illegal immigration laws, including a law mandating Medicaid-accepting hospitals to ask patients about their immigration status when they seek treatment and another banning community IDs for noncitizens.
"We've done a lot in deterring people from wanting to come," said the Governor.