A former FBI boss has warned of the biggest terrorist attack on US soil since 9/11 from a sleeper cell of militants who slipped into the country during the ‘open borders’ of the Biden era.

Chris Swecker, an assistant FBI director in the 2000s, says Hamas, Hezbollah, and other terrorist groups likely snuck sleeper agents into the US when the southern border was swamped with migrants.

Much like the al-Qaeda militants who spent months in the US before the 9/11 attacks, which killed 2,977 people, they may have seemingly ordinary lives.

That does not mean the aren’t preparing for mayhem and bloodshed in a desperate bid to further a radical ideology, he says.

His comments come in the wake of the outrage in Boulder, Colorado, where illegal Egyptian immigrant Mohamed Sabry Soliman, 45, threw petrol bombs into a rally in support of Israeli hostages, injuring a dozen people.

The nightmare scenario, said Swecker, would be if a handful of terrorists who crossed the southern border during the Biden administration ‘activated’ and wrought havoc with assault rifles and homemade bombs.

Likely candidates include Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shia Islamist paramilitary group, or Hamas, the Palestinian Sunni Islamists, he said. Both groups oppose Washington’s support for Israel, their shared mortal foe.

‘What terrorist organization would not take advantage of that access to this country without having to go through airports and any type of screening whatsoever, and not be here in a sleeper capacity?’ said Swecker.

Al-Qaeda militants spent months in the US before the 9/11 attacks, which killed 2,977 people

Chris Swecker, the assistant director who led the FBI’s Criminal Investigative Division in the 2000s, fears sleeper agents could mount another huge attack

‘If they’re not doing it, they’re a pretty poor terrorist organization.’

Those groups may not be able to recreate as complicated an attack as 9/11, given the greater security at airports and other likely targets nowadays, says Swecker, but a strike could still be catastrophic.

‘They were motivated enough to put together 9/11. Granted, we haven’t had anything like that since, but I can see a two- or three-person cell activating here in this country. And we know what kind of damage they could cause, just with shoulder weapons and IEDs.’

Swecker’s description recalls the November 2015 terrorist attack on Paris, when Islamist gunmen and suicide bombers attacked crowds at a football match, shops, and the Bataclan theater, killing 130 and injuring hundreds more.

During Joe Biden’s presidency, Republicans and security hawks repeatedly warned about the danger of terrorists entering the US during surges in immigrants, many of whom were waved into the country with minimal screening.

Under Biden, border patrol agents registered some 8 million ‘encounters’ on the southwest land frontier with Mexico. But this figure did not account for the ‘gotaways’ who entered undetected.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents apprehended members of Hezb-e-Islami, al Shabaab, and other foreign terrorist groups amid the surge. Some 400 suspected terrorist group members were known to have entered the country, according to official data.

According to Swecker, many more militants could have entered the country without being seen by ICE.

The Egyptian illegal immigrant who’s accused of burning pro-Israel protestors in Colorado highlights the threat of foreign terrorists on US soil, says Chris Swecker

Terrorists intent on striking the US homeland may have already infiltrated America, hidden among more than 10 million illegal immigrants who entered the country on Biden’s watch, says Swecker. (Above) Migrants breach barriers set up on the Rio Grande in El Paso, Texas on March 21, 2024

‘I was warning about this two years ago, when people were just streaming across the border. Now we’ve got up to about 1.8 million gotaways,’ says the former head of the FBI’s Criminal Investigative Division.

‘We don’t have any idea who they are or if they have a terrorism background.’

In his reelection campaign, Donald Trump said the Biden-Harris administration had ‘allowed 21 million illegals to pour in from all over the world,’ though this number has been contested.

Since returning to the White House in January, Trump has launched a crackdown on illegal immigration, resulting in far fewer encounters at the border and a sharp rise in deportations for foreigners without papers.

The type of terrorist attack Swecker envisages, a coordinated mass-casualty involving several militants and orchestrated by a broader political movement, would mark a return to a dark moment in America’s history.

Terrorism strikes in recent years have typically been carried out by a lone attacker, often one who has been radicalized by online activists, radical clerics, and alarm over Israel’s war with Palestinian militants.

They appear to include Soliman, who faces hate crime and attempted murder charges for the Colorado attack, and Elias Rodriguez, 30, the Chicago man who allegedly gunned down two Israeli embassy staff members outside a Jewish museum in Washington, DC earlier this month.

Coordinated terrorist strikes remain a threat across Western Europe and Russia, where ISIS-K members raided the Crocus City Hall outside Moscow on March 22, 2024

Some analysts say white supremacist terrorism is more prevalent than Islamist and anti-Israel violence, and describe the January 6, 2021, assault on the US Capitol by Trump supporters as an armed act of insurrectionist terrorism.

Immigrant advocacy groups argue that foreigners are often painted as violent criminals by conservatives, when in reality immigrants, even those who are in the US illegally, are less likely to commit crimes than the local population.

Swecker, however, says the bigger dangers come from overseas, the loose border policy, and a growing population of people within America who are not on board with the country’s founding ideas and values.

‘There’s a large population of people who are here from Middle East countries, that tried to make a go of it. And they’re not happy. They’re not making it and they developed a deep resentment for this country and its culture,’ he says.

‘The terrorist ideology has built on the hate and resentment to activate these types of people. And they know that there are quite a few of them here.’