EXCLUSIVE — Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) is hitting the Biden administration over its border policies amid rising numbers of reported terrorist crossings at the southern border, according to the Tennessee senator’s latest episode of Unmuted with Marsha, which was first shared with the Washington Examiner. 

Blackburn lamented the high number of immigrants on the terror watch list who have been apprehended trying to come into the United States, citing a report from U.S. Customs Border and Patrol earlier this year that found such apprehensions between the eight months of October 2022 and May 2023 were higher than the number of arrests in the 12-month period prior. And the number of unknown terrorists could be even higher, the senator warned.

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“We have had so far 143 known terrorists that have been apprehended at that southern border. Now, those are the ones that we know about,” Blackburn said. “People that you know are out there on the battlefield but you don’t expect them to walk up to you [asking for] asylum at the southern border.”

Border Patrol agents on the Canadian and Mexican borders have caught 127 noncitizens listed on the FBI’s terror watchlist who tried to enter the United States illegally since the start of fiscal 2023, according to federal data that was released in June. However, that number could be even higher, according to Fox News reporter Sara Carter, who joined Blackburn on the latest episode.

“There’s over 143 apprehensions. These are people that have clicked positive in databases, either the Interpol database or the U.S. database on people connected to terrorism,” Carter said. “What about the people that have not committed an act yet, or the ones that we haven’t fingerprinted or [identified] yet? How many of those have come in as the gotaways?”

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Blackburn specifically cited concerns with the rise in human trafficking, urging the Biden administration to secure the southern border to prevent more cases.

“It is imperative that in order to address the humanitarian crisis, whether it’s the human trafficking, the drug trafficking, the drugs in our communities that are killing tens of thousands of Americans, that we secure the southern border in order to protect our nation’s sovereignty,” Blackburn said.