Most Terrorists Enter the U.S. Through Canada, Not Mexico

For the past two years, 82% of those detained on suspicion of terrorism have attempted to enter the U.S. through the northern border.

Despite the recent decrees signed by President Donald Trump in matters of national security, through which he accuses alleged terrorists of entering through the border with Mexico, only 18% of those detained in recent years intended to enter through the border crossings with the southern neighbor.

An investigation by MILENIO, based on the latest Border Patrol (CBP) report, reveals that in the last three years only 156 people with “terrorist backgrounds” entered the country, just a tiny fraction of the grand total.

How many people have been detained for terrorism at the border?

According to the information generated by the police, between 2023 and so far this year, 1,129 people were detained at its borders, but in 82% of the cases of people wanted for some act related to terrorism, that is, 973 people, were detained while entering through Canada, a country considered very safe.

Despite such an abysmal statistical difference between Mexico and Canada, from the first day of his mandate, President Donald Trump implemented a misleading narrative by accusing that the national security emergency they were experiencing was generated at their southern border.

Attack plans from Canada

Muhammad Shahzeb Khan, a 20-year-old Pakistani citizen, began planning the attack from his home in Canada: his plan was to massacre, in the name of ISIS, the largest number of Jews in a major U.S. city.

The first signs of his fanaticism began on social networks, when he expressed his hatred for the Hebrew people.

This aroused the attention of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). It began infiltrating confidential sources and its agents posed from 2017 to 2024 as sympathizers of the cause of the individual who acted under the alias Shahzeb Jadoon.

Muhammad told the infiltrated source that he and an ISIS sympathizer living in the United States were attempting to activate a real, offline cell – disconnected from the internet – to carry out a coordinated assault in a U.S. city, using AR-style rifles.

In addition, he invited him to join his cause to attack chabads or traditional Jewish centers.

Between late July and mid-August, Shahzeb told the FBI source that “the attack will be unique on U.S. soil and our purpose is to sacrifice ourselves so that Muslims will wake up and support the (Islamic) State.”

During those conversations, Shahzeb Jadoon asked the insider to buy assault rifles, and confided that he had identified a human smuggler to cross into the U.S. so he could be part of the terrorist attacks.

The attacks would be carried out at a Jewish religious center located in Brooklyn, New York, and he even gave him a date: October 7, 2024, during the anniversary of the terrorist attacks in Israel perpetrated by Hamas:

“Brothers (…) We are going to New York to slaughter them God willing.”

Authorities were especially concerned about how they would coordinate with the human trafficker to help him cross the border and commit the attack. That finally happened on September 4, 2024, and at 2:54 p.m. he was apprehended 12 miles from the northern U.S. border.

Stories like this are more recurrent in the northern United States, where Customs and Border Protection officers have detained 484 people on terrorism charges in 2023, 358 in 2024 and 131 so far in 2025, for a total of 973.

At a discursive and public level, the northern border had gone largely unnoticed, a situation that seems to change now, since Tom Homan -Donald Trump’s border czar- took a position on the problems they have with their northern neighbor, assuring that there is an “extreme vulnerability for national security” along the border between Canada and the United States.

There are few cases in Mexico, but they do exist

On August 12, 2024, he was captured in Santa Teresa, New Mexico, on the southern border of the United States. Omar told the detaining authorities in Arabic that he was Palestinian, expressed his fear of returning to his home country and his intention to seek asylum, however, the true background of his presence there was quite different.

“He was actively on the watch list as a possible terrorist or for having terrorist affiliations,” documents from an appeals court reveal. Although the authorities didn’t provide more detailed information, it is known that he was on the watch list for having been involved in explosives-related issues.

Just a month earlier, U.S. media had reported that three Palestinian immigrants with possible terrorist connections were detained by border agents after illegally crossing the San Diego-Mexico border.

 Despite these types of cases, the trend is clear: terrorist crossings target the northern United States and not the southern border with Mexico. In fact, according to Customs and Border Protection figures, the trend has been downward in recent years.

In fiscal year 2023, 80 people with terrorist ties were apprehended at the border with Mexico; in 2024 it dropped to 52, and so far this 2025 there have been just 24 cases.

These individuals are part of the lists created by Executive Order 13224, the Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs), mechanisms that have allowed the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Treasury to name and charge people from different parts of the world as terrorists.

Even with this evidence, Republican politicians, led by U.S. President Donald Trump, insist on assuring that the real danger in terms of terrorism is south of their border. He declared a “national emergency” on the border and deployed thousands of troops to the border strip.

The real danger, however, is more than 3,600 kilometers to the north. 

Source: Milenio