Republican Utah Sen. Mike Lee slammed President Biden’s CBP One mobile application, which he said made it easier for terrorists to come into the country during a Wednesday appearance on Fox Business.
Lee was defending the VALID Act, a bill he’s introducing that would ban the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) from accepting the use of Biden’s CBP One app, he explained to Fox’s Stuart Varney. Federal law enforcement arrested six Russian/Tajikistani nationals with ties to ISIS in June, one of whom Lee says entered the country using the CBP One app.
“TSA shouldn’t be accepting that app as a form of ID because it requires no valid ID. All you have to do is fill it out, put in whatever name, whatever biographical information you choose to. Then you can get into the country, just like this terrorist got into the country last year, this terrorist who’s now been arrested,” Lee told Varney.
The Biden administration brought ISIS terrorists onto American soil.
Then, they helped one travel around the country with a government app made for illegals who don’t have ID. pic.twitter.com/SAPbaH66qj
— Mike Lee (@SenMikeLee) June 12, 2024
Dems told us “the CBP One app is working fine.”
That’s not true.
Of the Eight terrorists were arrested yesterday, at least one entered the U.S. using the CBP One app.
Hundreds of thousands have entered with the app.
How many of them are terrorits? 🧵1/https://t.co/gyGVSZfZ0Y
— Mike Lee (@BasedMikeLee) June 12, 2024
“What’s really scary, is that we don’t know anything about the other hundreds of thousands of people who have gotten in using the CBP One app. This one in particular we know is a terrorist. How many other terrorists are out there, Stuart, who got into the country the same way, using the app?” Lee asked.
Lee said the CPB One app allows migrants to enter the country without a valid form of identification. (RELATED: The Biden Admin Is Ushering Tens Of Thousands Of Migrants Each Month To Work In The US Through Key Border Program)
“U.S. citizens, when they board a plane in Denver bound for Salt Lake City or anywhere else, they have to present a valid form of ID. Likewise, when a U.S. citizen leaves the country, they’ve gotta have a passport so they can get back in. Illegal aliens don’t have to produce either one. All they need is access to a phone and the CBP One mobile app and they can enter in whatever they want.”
Biden launched the CBP One app in January 2023 as a legal pathway for migrants who were seeking exemptions from Title 42. Title 42 was a Trump-era a public health measure enacted during the COVID pandemic that allowed officials to deport migrants in an effort to stop the spread of Covid.
The app “enables noncitizens without appropriate documents for admission who seek to travel to the United States through certain southwest border land ports of entry (POEs) the ability to submit information through a module within the application instead of coming directly to wait at a POE,” according to the Department of Homeland Security.
Lee said congressional Democrats dismissed the idea that terrorists were entering the U.S. through the southern border.
“Keep in mind, Stuart, the Democrats have been insisting over and over again that the need for the VALID Act just didn’t exist because, as they put it, it’s not being abused. Its being utilized properly. Nobody’s getting in who shouldn’t be. Some even claim that it wasn’t a substitute for a valid form of ID. All that is untrue, and it’s been proven yet again untrue by our discovery of this known terrorist who we now know got into the country using the CBP One app,” Lee concluded.
In November, the New York Times’ Eileen Sullivan fact-checked a claim from Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis where he said terrorists were coming through the southern border. Sullivan labeled the statement “false.”
Response from an editor on NYT standards desk when I inquired again this fact-check after @JennieSTaer’s new reporting.
“These new facts that emerged after our initial factcheck was published can certainly be addressed in future coverage of the topic.” https://t.co/WqUypGOBVc
— Elias Atienza (@AtienzaElias) June 12, 2024