The Biden-Harris administration declines to disclose the nationalities of migrants on the terror watchlist who were apprehended at the border.

The Biden-Harris administration has once more refused to disclose the nationalities of individuals on the FBI terror watchlist who were apprehended by Border Patrol, asserting that it safeguards the privacy of those detained and maintaining that it could jeopardize law enforcement operations and alert terrorists.

"The Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency stated in a letter to Fox that it is dedicated to safeguarding the privacy of individuals and preventing the disclosure of any personal information, either directly or indirectly. Revealing data for a specific nationality or group of individuals could potentially lead to identification, particularly by organizations that are familiar with the individuals in question."

In October 2023, Bill Melugin of Fox filed a Freedom of Information Act request to obtain the nationalities of suspects on the FBI terror watchlist who were arrested at the southern border by Border Patrol.

The request was for the nationalities of the individuals met, not their names, dates of birth, or any other identifying details.

In May, CBP confirmed that the information is stored in the Terrorist Screening Dataset (TSDS), but refused to provide it to Fox.

The letter stated that it was granting exemptions to safeguard the disclosure of confidential information that could cause an "unjustified invasion of privacy" and must weigh the public's right to access against an individual's right to privacy.

The agency reinforced its argument in its letter to Fox this month.

"The privacy interests of third parties (who could be subject to harassment and annoyance if their information is released) outweigh any public interest in having their information disclosed."

The agency asserted that disclosing the information would expose the methods employed in capturing terrorists during the investigation process.

The provision of this information could enable targets to modify their actions to evade detection and exploit the weaknesses in CBP's law enforcement intelligence, while also compromising national security. Furthermore, providing the requested information could reveal terrorist travel patterns by region, which could alert terrorists about the government's knowledge of their travel plans, enabling them to take countermeasures against investigators and their investigations.

The examples were provided of permitting terrorist organizations to compare the number of disclosed nationalities to their operational numbers.

The letter stated that if an organization moved a certain number of operatives of a specific nationality over a certain period, and the disclosed nationality numbers were significantly lower than that number, the terrorist organization could infer that a large percentage of its operatives from that nationality had moved undetected (thereby reducing the effectiveness of the TSDS).

The agency contended that revealing nationalities could enable malicious actors to evade CBP's law enforcement operations and exploit any weaknesses in CBP's enforcement strategies.

This information could enable malicious actors to reverse engineer effective countermeasures to evade detection and hinder CBP's efforts to interdict their activities.

More than 560 nationals on the terror watchlist were encountered at the ports of entry last fiscal year, while 172 such encounters occurred at the border between ports of entry.

This fiscal year, there have been 98 encounters between the ports of entry and 324 at the ports.

The Terrorist Screening Dataset, previously known as the watchlist, encompasses both known and suspected terrorists, as well as individuals who may pose a potential threat to the U.S., including affiliates of those on the watchlist.