Afghan On FBI's Terrorist Database Tried To Cross US Border Amid Title 42 Deadline

Border Patrol agents apprehended an Afghan national currently on the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) terror watchlist after he tried to illegally cross into the U.S. Wednesday.

The Afghan national crossed the border with a group of migrants near Otay Mesa in California, multiple sources from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) confirmed to Fox News.

CBP then took them into a processing station to check their identities, and fingerprint scans determined the Afghan was a match to someone on the Terrorist Screening Database. The FBI was notified of the results and immediately conducted an investigation.

The suspected terrorist was arrested a day after the expiration of Title 42 – a pandemic-era restriction that allowed border agents to send illegally crossing migrants back to Mexico. After it expired on Thursday, thousands quickly flooded the border.

Republican U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa of California, representing the district where the suspected Afghan terrorist got arrested, called the Biden administration's border policies attractive to terrorists.

"Biden's open borders aren't just a gateway to five million illegals, record human and child trafficking and the deadliest drug crisis in our history," Issa said in an interview with Fox News.

"Biden's reckless policy is also an open invitation to even the most wanted terrorists in the world to come to America. They'll know they'll never have to leave. The nation knows what's going on, and this president has only begun to be held accountable for what he has done," he added.

Data from CBP in March revealed that at least 69 non-U.S. citizens on the FBI's watchlist got caught trying to illegally enter the U.S. through the southern border since October of last year, the New York Post reported.

With Title 42 already over, hundreds of thousands of migrants are expected to rush to the border in hopes of seeking asylum in the U.S. The arrests of individuals on the FBI's terror watchlist will likely surpass last year's total arrests of 98, per New York Post estimates.

Border security officers were already overwhelmed in some parts of the southern border, describing the situation as a crisis. Just a week ago, some 80,000 asylum seekers from South America were planning to go to the border.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott last week deployed the National Guard to help manage the situation at the border and hold off dozens of groups crossing into the state through the Rio Grande.