A Lebanese man arrested at the southern border told U.S. authorities he traveled from the Middle East because he was a member of the terrorist group Hezbollah and planned to build a bomb once in the United States, the Washington Examiner has learned.

Border Patrol agents in the El Paso, Texas, region arrested Basel Bassel Ebbadi of Lebanon after he illegally crossed the U.S.-Mexico border on March 9, according to an internal government document shared with the Washington Examiner Monday morning.

While in custody, the 22-year-old man told Border Patrol agents that “I’m going to try to make a bomb.” Ebbadi also said he planned to travel to New York.

Border Patrol called in agents from its Tactical Terrorism Response Team to speak with Ebbadi following his initial statement.

After being read his Miranda rights, Ebbadi told authorities that he was a member of Hezbollah, an Iran-funded foreign terrorist organization, according to the document. Hezbollah has assisted Hamas in its attacks against Israel since Hamas militants carried out an attack in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, that resulted in 1,139 deaths and 240 kidnapped victims.

But Ebbadi also said that he was fleeing Lebanon and Hamas because he “didn’t want to kill people,” according to a separate Immigration and Customs Enforcement document obtained by the New York Post.

Ebbadi confessed that he had trained with Hezbollah for seven years and had been an active member of the terrorist group responsible for guarding weapons locations for four additional years, meaning he was recruited as an adolescent, according to the newspaper.

His training focused on “jihad,” and he was trained to target people who were “not Muslim.”

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) blamed President Joe Biden and the Democrats for “inviting the inevitable” by taking inadequate action to end the border crisis that has been underway for three years.

“That is what happens when Joe Biden and the Democrats open up our southern border. And it is inviting the inevitable, which is what just happened,” Cruz said in a podcast with host Ben Ferguson that aired Monday morning.

“I’m very worried about 10, 20, 50, a hundred more Hezbollah and Hamas terrorists coming over and intending to do something worse than 9/11, intending to do something on the order of magnitude of Oct. 7, or even worse,” the senator said. “This is a clear and present danger. And it is caused daily by Joe Biden and congressional Democrats, leaving our border wide open.”

Since the government’s fiscal 2024 began in October 2023 through January 2024, Border Patrol has arrested 58 illegal immigrants who were determined to be on the FBI terrorist watchlist.

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In 2023, agents arrested 172 illegal immigrants on the southern and northern borders who were identified as part of the terrorist watchlist. Three of the 172 illegal immigrants were apprehended on the northern border as opposed to the majority, 169, who were caught at the U.S.-Mexico border.

“What’s much more troubling is the hundreds of thousands of gotaways,” Cruz said. “But the really serious terrorists are the ones that don’t get apprehended are the ones that are gotaways.”

Customs and Border Protection did not respond to the Washington Examiner’s request for comment.