CV NEWS FEED // Retired Chief Border Patrol Agent Aaron Heitke testified in front of the House Homeland Security Committee on Wednesday alleging that the Biden-Harris administration has “[tried] to convince the public there was no threat at the border” despite knowing of a drastic increase in suspected terrorists illegally entering the country.
Heitke told House lawmakers that as the number of illegal migrants encountered by Border Patrol “increased exponentially” under the Biden-Harris administration, “the impact to me and my agents were significant.”
“The Border Patrol saw groups of hundreds and thousands coming into the United States and turning themselves in,” he continued. “These numbers pulled 80, 90, sometimes 100 percent of the agents on duty away from the border.”
“Border Patrol zones across Texas, Arizona, and California, had no agent presence for weeks and months at a time,” he said, adding that this meant migrants “who did not want to be caught could simply walk in.”
“We have no idea who and what entered our country over this time,” Heitke said.
The former Border Patrol chief recounted that in the years 2022 and 2023, he “sent agents to Texas and Arizona to count ‘gotaways.’”
“Those sectors could not even put enough agents in the field to see what they’ve missed,” he indicated.
CatholicVote previously reported: “‘Gotaways’ refers to people who illegally enter the country but whom U.S. law enforcement fail to detain.”
Heitke said that at the same time this was happening, “we had an exponential increase in significant interest aliens [SIAs]” in San Diego. SIAs “are aliens with significant ties to terrorism,” he explained.
>> MAY: BORDER STATS SHOWS THERE WERE FIVE TIMES MORE ‘GOTAWAYS’ UNDER BIDEN <<
Heitke said that before the Biden-Harris administration took office, the “San Diego sector averaged 10 to 15 SIA arrests a year.”
“Once word was out the border was far easier to cross, San Diego went to over 100 SIAs in 2022, well over that in 2023, and even more than that registered this year,” he noted. “These are the only the ones that we caught.”
“At the time, I was told I could not release any information on this increase in SIAs or mention any of the arrests,” he added. “The administration was trying to convince the public there was no threat at the border.”
Rep. Anthony D’Esposito, R-NY, asked Heitke, “What information do we have on the millions of known gotaways that have entered this country?”
“None,” the retired chief Border Patrol agent responded.
“Zero information of millions of people some of which have found to be on the terror watchlist, we have zero information?” D’Esposito asked again.
“Correct,” Heitke confirmed.
Committee Chairman Mark Green, R-TN, said he found it “fascinating, that because it was overwhelming San Diego, the administration actually created for the cost of $150,000, plane flights to Texas of all these people, as a way to keep it quiet.”
Green also asked Heitke to clarify his earlier assertion that the Biden-Harris administration asked him to move 2,000 illegal migrants “out of sight of the media.”
Heitke replied:
Groups were coming in to turn themselves over faster than we can keep up. We only had so much space … they were building up, the media was showing them sitting in between the fences. And it looked bad, and they wanted them moved. I had no place to put them.
“Why would they want to hide that?” Green asked. “Why wouldn’t they want the world to know what’s going on? … Why would they want to spend $150,000 to fly them to Texas to keep people from seeing the mass waves?”
“It looks bad,” Heitke noted. “When I was asked about the flights to Texas, I was very specifically told there’s a problem in Texas, there isn’t a problem in California.”
“Wow,” the lawmaker said. “So purposeful policies wreaking havoc on a community so we’ll just hide it. Perfect.”
Rep. Josh Brecheen, R-OK, asked, “Do you think … the average American family who hears these stories has a right to feel less safe?”
“Do you think it’s justified, the feeling across America of just regular people sending their sons or daughters into a public space … where they’re not present with that child – that this validates a heightened concern for their children’s safety?” the congressman added in his question.
“I do,” Heitke answered.
Breechen followed up by asking Heitke in his “decades of experience, this heightened level of concern, was it experienced under the Trump administration at this level? Or is there something to be said in direct correlation to this current administration’s position on the border?”
Heitke replied: “In my time with the Border Patrol, I have never seen entire zones that were left without agent presence. I’ve never seen that before.”
