SAN ANTONIO — An Afghan migrant on the terror watchlist spent nearly a year inside the U.S. after being apprehended and released by Border Patrol agents in 2023, U.S. officials tell NBC News. The Afghan national was arrested last month and then released again by an immigration judge who was not told he was a national security threat.
Mohammad Kharwin, 48, is currently out on bond as he awaits an immigration hearing in Texas, scheduled for 2025. There are no restrictions on his movements inside the United States, U.S. officials said.
Kharwin was initially apprehended on March 10, 2023, near San Ysidro, California, after crossing the Mexico-U.S. border illegally.
Border agents suspected he was on the U.S. terrorist watchlist at the time of his apprehension because one piece of information matched an individual on the list. But the agents lacked corroborating information, which officials declined to describe, that would confirm Kharwin was the person they suspected, according to U.S. officials.
After processing Kharwin and taking his biometric data, Customs and Border Protection released him as they would any other migrant, without contacting the FBI or Immigration and Customs Enforcement, U.S. officials said.
Kharwin was then able to apply for asylum and work authorization, and fly domestically in the United States, the officials said.
Kharwin is on the national terror watchlist maintained by the FBI, which contains the names of 1.8 million individuals considered potential security risks. The database indicates he is a member of Hezb-e-Islami, or HIG, a political and paramilitary organization that the U.S. has designated a terrorist organization.
According to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, HIG is a “virulently anti-Western insurgent group” that sought to overturn the Western-backed Afghan government before its fall in 2021.
HIG was responsible for attacks in Afghanistan that killed at least nine American soldiers and civilians between 2013 and 2015. The group is not seen as a top threat in terms of attacks inside the U.S.
The Biden administration has said it prioritizes migrants considered a threat to national security for detention and deportation. Asked about Kharwin’s case, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security said, “While we can’t comment on ongoing matters, we are tracking closely and, as always, taking all necessary steps to ensure public safety.”
“Vetting is a point-in-time check that evaluates information available to the U.S. Government at that time,” the DHS spokesperson added. “If individuals who have entered the country are later found to be associated with information indicating a potential national security or public safety concern, DHS and our federal partners have procedures in place to investigate and take appropriate action.”
In February 2024, the FBI passed information to ICE indicating that Kharwin had potential terror ties and may pose a risk to national security. Soon after, and nearly a year after he was released near the border, ICE agents conducted an operation and arrested Kharwin on Feb. 28 in San Antonio, Texas, according to sources familiar with the case.
Kharwin was held in ICE detention until his court hearing on March 28, when he appeared before an immigration judge in Pearsall, Texas. Immigration judges decide whether migrants can stay legally in the U.S., continue to be detained or be deported.
When ICE prosecutors appeared in court, they did not share with the judge some classified information that purportedly showed Kharwin’s ties to HIG, two U.S. officials said. Prosecutors argued that the man should be detained without bond because he was a flight risk, but they did not say that he was a national security risk, according to sources familiar with the case.
The judge ordered Kharwin released on bond. The Justice Department, which oversees immigration judges and courts, declined to name the judge or respond to a request for official comment.
On March 30, ICE released Kharwin after he paid the $12,000 bond mandated by the immigration judge, which is higher than most bonds for migrants awaiting immigration court dates.
The judge placed no restrictions on his movements inside the U.S., but required him to appear for his next court hearing in a year. ICE has not appealed the judge’s decision, sources familiar with the case said.The case illustrates the challenges U.S. officials face in identifying migrants who may pose a national security threat. Kharwin’s case is the third incident in two years in which Customs and Border Protection has released migrants with suspected terrorist ties.
Earlier this year, a migrant with ties to the Somali terror group al-Shabaab was arrested in Minnesota after living in the U.S. for nearly a year, the Daily Caller reported.
In that case, the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Center made a “redetermination” that he should be placed on the watchlist after he was released, the Daily Caller reported.
A June 2023 DHS Inspector General Report reviewed an incident from April 2022 in which a migrant was released because information that would have linked him to the watchlist was not properly gathered. The report did not disclose the migrant’s nationality but it found that the CBP sent a request for more information to the wrong email address.
In both of those cases, however, the migrants suspected of terror ties were taken into custody.
Jason Houser, former chief of staff for ICE under the Biden administration and former senior adviser for counterterrorism for CBP in the Obama administration, said it is rare for terrorists to cross the border and even more unusual for CBP to release someone who turns out to be a threat.
“We need to make sure we have processes in place to handle them, make sure they’re detained and we know exactly where they are,” Houser said.
Houser said DHS is now better equipped to detect terrorists and the number of them trying to enter the U.S. is still very low, even with record crossings at the border.
“Any terrorist or terrorist-linked individual trying to come into this country is unacceptable,” Houser said. “But we have built across the U.S. government federal law enforcement, the intelligence community, the ability to identify these individuals.”
On the campaign trail, Donald Trump has repeatedly turned to the threat of terrorism at the border as a reason why he should be elected president again.
“Terrorists are pouring in, unchecked, from all over the world,” Trump wrote on Truth Social earlier this year.
An NBC News analysis found that the percentage of migrants on the terror watchlist as a portion of the total CBP encounters across U.S. borders was slightly lower under the Biden administration than the Trump administration. It remained an average of 0.02% during the Biden administration, lower than the 0.05% under Trump.
In fiscal year 2023, which ended in late September and included a surge in border crossings, CBP had 736 encounters with migrants on the terror watchlist at U.S. borders, the highest number of the past six years. The second highest year was 2019, during the Trump administration, when CBP had 541 encounters with migrants on the watchlist.
It is not known if any migrants on the watchlist were released into the U.S. during the Trump administration.
The vetting systems used to screen migrants at the border under the Biden administration are virtually the same as those used under Trump. When a migrant comes across the border between legal ports of entry, a Border Patrol agent collects the migrant’s name, date of birth, nationality, biometric information (like fingerprints) and photos. An agent then checks a series of national security databases to see if there is a criminal background or if they’re on the nation’s terror watchlist.
Democrats on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee said in a letter to DHS late last year that the terrorism watchlist is overly broad. They said that having too many people on the list who pose little or no threat to the U.S. can erode the rights of travelers and prove ineffective at stopping those who mean to do harm on U.S. soil.
With a bipartisan immigration reform package blocked in Congress by pro-Trump Republicans, additional border security funding that might address the problems shown by the recent cases is unlikely.
There are fears, meanwhile, that tens of thousands of migrants are evading agents as they cross the southern border.
“That is a national security threat,” Border Patrol Chief Jason Owens recently told CBS News. “They’re exploiting a vulnerability that’s on our border right now.”
Watch “NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt” for more on this story tonight at 6:30 p.m. ET/5:30 p.m. CT.
