Man on terror watch list reportedly released into Michigan after crossing border
Michigan investigative journalist Charlie LeDuff calls for immediate action on 'Tucker Carlson Tonight.'
Michigan investigative journalist Charlie LeDuff told Fox News on Thursday that a Lebanese-born Venezuelan national listed on the FBI's terror watchlist was released into the United States after crossing the border illegally.
According to LeDuff's reporting for Deadline Detroit, Issam Bazzi, who was caught near the Rio Grande River in Texas last November, was released on his own recognizance ahead of his March asylum hearing in Detroit. Bazzi reportedly traveled to the U.S. illegally with his wife and daughter, said LeDuff.
Bazzi got "word that the Biden administration has given asylum to Venezuelans. He, his daughter, and his wife fly to Monterrey, Mexico, hire a smuggler, get rafted over into Brownsville, Texas, wants asylum," LeDuff explained on "Tucker Carlson Tonight."
"He is not only on the terror watch list. The hit comes back high derogatory information affiliated with an unspecified group. Classified information," said LeDuff.
Despite this, Bazzi was reportedly released into the U.S. because his weight deemed him at high risk for COVID, the journalist told Tucker Carlson.
Jan. 23, 2022: Fox News footage shows migrants being released into the US.
"The important thing here is that we all wondered, who got in? Did terrorists get in? We now know that the government has a known terrorist that they let go. Why? Because he’s a high COVID risk. Why? Because he is overweight. So now in my community we get this guy. Nobody I know in the federal government, probably nobody you know, has ever heard about letting somebody high up on the terror watch list into the interior of this country. It is ridiculous," LeDuff said.
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The FBI reportedly interrogated Bazzi and opposed his release. Local ICE agents deemed him a "flight risk."
"But in the great wisdom of Washington, this is the new normal," LeDuff said.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents arrested two other men on the FBI's terrorism watchlist last year as they tried to cross the southern U.S. border, the agency said.
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The men, ages 33 and 26, were from Yemen, and were apprehended in the El Centro, California, sector.
Former Border Patrol Chief Rodney Scott had repeatedly sounded the alarm over the number of migrants identified on the Terrorist Screening Database coming across the border, telling fellow agents that it was "at a level we have never seen before. "
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