According to a recent report, a Lebanese migrant who was caught sneaking over the border admitted he was a member of Hezbollah and was hoping to make a bomb on his way to New York.
The report from The New York Post named 22-year-old Basel Bassel Ebbadi as the man caught by the US Border Patrol on March 9 near El Paso, Texas.
The Post cited a Border Patrol document that it obtained and showed that when Ebbadi was asked why he was in the US, he said, “I’m going to try to make a bomb.”
Internal US Immigration and Customs Enforcement documents showed that Ebbadi later claimed he was trying to flee Lebanon and Hezbollah because he “didn’t want to kill people,” but said that “once you’re in, you can never get out,” the Post reported.
The documents showed that Ebbadi said during a sworn interview that he was trained by Hezbollah for seven years, focusing on “jihad” and killing people “that was not Muslim,” he said.
Ebbadi attempted to enter the US without any documents showing who he was, and he said that he was robbed “with a knife” in Costa Rica, ICE documents showed. He also admitted to using a fake birthday and name in Sweden, Ecuador, and Panama this year.
While the documents show he originally planned to go to New York, he also wanted to then move around the country.
This isn’t the first time that the Border Patrol has encountered individuals on the terror list.
In 2022, at the country’s southern and northern borders, border agents reported 98 encounters with terror watchlisted individuals, and in fiscal year 2023, they recorded 172 encounters.
As for Ebbadi, The Post reported that he has since been marked for deportation from the US, although it was not clear to which country he would be sent.