A top Obama administration official has slammed a claim by Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Cal., that 10 Islamic State (ISIS) terrorists were caught attempting to cross the southern U.S. border, but Hunter is not backing down an inch.
Department of Homeland Security Secretary
Jeh Johnson, without specifically naming Hunter, essentially accused him of irresponsibly spreading "fear and anxiety in the public by passing on speculation and rumor" in an interview with CNN's "Situation Room" host, Wolf Blitzer.
However, Duncan stuck to his guns, and his spokesman Joe Kasper told CNN: "The congressman was conveying what he knows and what he was told. And as for DHS' statement, it makes sense that the left hand of DHS doesn't know what the right hand is doing. It's been that way for a long time and we don't expect that to change. No surprise there."
Hunter told Fox News that 10 Islamic State terrorists had been captured while trying to infiltrate the U.S., and said, "There's nobody talking about it. If you really want to protect Americans from ISIS, you secure the southern border. It's that simple.
"They caught them at the border; therefore, we know that ISIS is coming across the border. If they catch five or ten of them, then you know there's going to be dozens more that did not get caught by the Border Patrol,"
he told Fox News.
Johnson told CNN: "We have no credible specific intelligence to that effect and I look at the intelligence reports from overseas, from our southern border, from our intelligence committee, virtually every day, numerous times a day, to be on the lookout for something of that nature.
"What I say to the American public is we're vigilant in looking out for individuals of suspicion who may be crossing our border and we have no specific intelligence that ISIL [Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, the administration's preferred way of referring to ISIS] is plotting to come into the homeland through our southern border, but we're constantly on the lookout."
He added, in a direct slap at Hunter, "What I say to public officials is that we need to be responsible in what we say in passing on speculation, rumor, to not unduly cause fear and anxiety in the American public, so as a Homeland Security official, I think I have a responsibility to inform the public but not unnecessarily frighten the American public and I would encourage other public officials to do the same thing."
Hunter, a member of the House Armed Services Committee, said he had been told by U.S. Border Patrol agents about the 10 terrorists, and added, "ISIS doesn’t have a Navy. They don't have an Air Force. They don't have nuclear weapons. The only way that ISIS is going to harm Americans is by coming through the southern border, which they already have.
"They aren’t flying B-1 bombers, bombing American cities," Hunter told Fox, "but they are going to be bombing American cities coming across from Mexico … All you have to do is ask the Border Patrol.”
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