OAN’s Brooke Mallory
2:44 PM – Monday, March 18, 2024
Customs and Border Protection (CBP) told the press that a 22-year-old Lebanese immigrant who was detained on March 9th for entering the country illegally near El Paso, Texas, claimed to be a former member of Hezbollah who was traveling to New York and intended “to make a bomb.”
However, other reports have stated that he is a current member of Hezbollah.
According to the New York Post, Basell Ebbadi informed federal officials that he had been trained for seven years by the Iran-backed terrorist group and had worked for four more years as an armed guard at weapons facilities.
Ebbadi admitted to agents that he intended “to make a bomb” after entering the United States. Before attempting to enter the country, the Lebanese man explained that he had a fake identification card with a false identity and birthday.
Ebbadi was also acting quite confidently, according to a CBP source, who labeled him as “bloviating and acting with machismo.”
He is now marked for deportation.
This occurs at a time when, according to federal officials, migrant interactions with the U.S. Border Patrol in the El Paso Sector have continued to increase over the last few weeks. In the last two weeks, border officials in the area have encountered at least 1,100 migrants on an average day. It is a combination of groups of undocumented foreign nationals attempting to avoid arrest and conviction in their own countries as well as asylum-seekers attempting to surrender at the border wall in order to live a better life.
Hezbollah is known as one of the world’s most dangerous terrorist groups. Its aim is to completely annihilate Israel, similar to that of Hamas. Arab media sources have even reported that the terrorist group applauded Hamas’s October 7th terrorist operation inside Israel.
According to Reuters, the terror group stated that it was in direct contact with the leadership of the Palestinian resistance throughout the strike against Israel on October 7th.
The U.S. Border Patrol has detected at least 59 individuals who are on terror watchlists attempting to pass between ports of entry since October, continuing a notable trend that began after Joe Biden was elected in 2021. According to official data, less than ten individuals on the list were encountered annually during the fiscal years 2017 and 2020.
Ebbadi is now being imprisoned at the El Paso Sector Hardened Facility.
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