(The Center Square) – Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody and Florida law enforcement officials are urging Floridians to report suspicious activity after FBI Director Christopher Wray told Congress this week that “a threat of [a terrorist] attack against Americans in the United States [rose] to a whole other level.”
Moody met with state and local law enforcement officials on Thursday in Boynton Beach to hold a confidential security briefing. At a news conference later in the day, she expressed “growing terrorism concerns related to the ongoing war in Israel and increased security in Florida.”
She called on Floridians to be law enforcement’s “eyes and ears. If you see something, say something. Call 855-FLA-SAFE.”
Florida law enforcement officers have been vigilant about investigating and arresting alleged perpetrators of antisemitic crimes. Earlier this week, “FDLE agents, as part of the Joint Terrorism Task Force, arrested a Sarasota man after receiving a tip that he was threatening a Rabbi and Jewish facility,” FDLE Commissioner Mark Glass said at the news conference.
FLHSMV Executive Director Dave Kerner said, “Our National Security is in jeopardy because of the open southern border. The lack of transparency the federal government has provided to state law enforcement has compounded the threat. With recent acts of terror against Israel and the increase in antisemitic threats here domestically, it is critical that we know who is sneaking into our country and where they are from.”
FDLE crime intelligence analysts receive hundreds of tips every month from suspicious activity reports, Glass said, adding that Floridians “reporting suspicious activity saves lives.”
Moody and FDLE also sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security “demanding information about foreign nationals who entered Florida after being released by federal authorities at the Southwest border.”
“For nearly three years now, [President Joe] Biden has intentionally and systematically demolished our nation’s border security,” Moody said. “This has allowed known and unknown numbers of illegal aliens with unknown intentions to walk across our border with Mexico – and we have no idea where in our country they are living or what they might be planning.
“We demand that DHS immediately provide information about who is in our state, when they were last contacted by the federal government, and how many of them are ‘special interest aliens’ raising significant public safety concerns.”
The letter points to an outdated number of known or suspected terrorists apprehended at the southern border in fiscal 2023. It also overlooks the total number of KSTs apprehended last fiscal year – 736 – the most in recorded U.S. history. The majority, 487, were apprehended at the northern border.
Moody also mentioned a record number of gotaways that have been detected illegally entering the U.S. Contrary to some reports and a claim made by DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, at least nearly 770,000 gotaways were reported by Border Patrol agents alone in fiscal 2023, according to data first reported by The Center Square. An estimated 2 million have been apprehended since January 2021.
The nearly 770,000 gotaways are included in the roughly 4 million illegal border crossers reported in fiscal 2023 and more than 10 million since January 2021, when Biden first took office.
These are the highest numbers of illegal border crossers reported in recorded U.S. history.
Former U.S. Customs and Border Protection Chief Mark Morgan has asked “how many aliens on the Terror Watchlist or Special Interest Aliens, who come from countries we know sponsor or harbor terrorist organizations, are among the [close to 1.7 million] known gotaways who have entered our country under [Mayorkas’] watch.
“The answer is – he has no idea. It’s not if, and when, the threat arrives in our homeland. It’s already here.”
Floridians are encouraged to report unusual activity by calling 855-FLA-SAFE. Such activity includes unusual situations like:
a vehicle parked in an odd or prohibited location;someone acquiring large quantities of cell phones, timers or toxic materials;unattended packages, backpacks or luggage;damaged security devices (cameras, perimeter fencing or lighting);prolonged observation and unusual photography of a building, bridge or structure.
