U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents conduct an arrest as part of President Donald Trump's wide-ranging immigration crackdown in Chicago on Jan. 26, 2025. (Immigration and Customs Enforcement/Handout via REUTERS)
"I think one thing that's really concerning about that: One, they weren't doing any really meaningful vetting in the last administration. The second part of it is, you know, we have probably 2 million known gotaways come through the last administration, and the people that went through the non-ports of entry, we knew they went through but nobody caught them, so we have no idea who went through," he added.
Fahey noted that other countries were likely paying close attention to the heavy flow of people crossing into the country illegally. He briefly led ICE toward the end of Trump’s first term and was the former deputy assistant secretary at the DHS.
"But the thing that's concerning is all of our adversaries knew at the time that we basically, in all intents and purposes, had an open border. So, to the extent they wanted to send people in to spy, to collect intelligence, to do us harm, to plan to do us harm in the future, they had carte blanche to get anyone in that they wanted to with really little or no resistance," Fahey said.
OVER 700 IRANIAN NATIONALS RELEASED INTO US DURING BIDEN ADMINISTRATION DESPITE TERRORISM CONCERNS
Iranians shout anti-U.S. and anti-Israeli slogans as one of them holds a portrait of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei during an anti-Israeli rally to condemn Israeli attacks on Iran, after Tehran's Friday prayers in Tehran, Iran, on June 20, 2025. (Photo by Morteza Nikoubazl/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Other national security experts also doubled down that the releases and gotaways during the Biden administration continued to pose a risk.
"We don't know where those thousand Iranians are and who knows how many others got across the border. We missed an opportunity when they caught and released those thousand. We missed the opportunity to gather intel by interviewing them and thoroughly vetting them. We just simply let them go, which is gross negligence on the part of the Biden administration," former FBI assistant director Chris Swecker told Fox News Digital.
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Border czar Tom Homan also sounded the alarm about gotaways on "Sunday Morning Futures" right after the Iran strikes.
"We don't know who they are, where they came from, because they got away because border patrol is so overwhelmed with the humanitarian crisis that Biden created. Over two million people crossed the border and got away. That is my biggest concern. And that's what created the biggest national security vulnerability this country's ever seen," Homan said.
When it comes to known releases, the Trump administration released nobody in May, compared with roughly 62,000 releases under the Biden administration last May, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection data.
Cameron Arcand is a politics writer at Fox News Digital in Washington D.C. Story tips can be sent to Cameron.Arcand@Fox.com and on Twitter: @cameron_arcand
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/ex-ice-chief-warns-bidens-border-crisis-fueled-iranian-sleeper-threat