The war in the Middle East — and the unspeakable war crimes committed so far by Hamas — should put America on high alert to vulnerabilities in our own border. That’s what a former acting commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Mark Morgan, warns in an interview with the Sun. 

The war “represents to us that global terrorism is alive and well, the ideology has not been defeated,” he says. Israel has one of the best and “most formidable” intelligence systems in the world, and its intelligence failure regarding the attack should worry Americans, Mr. Morgan adds. 

“The same global terrorists that attacked Israel, have the same ideology and hatred towards America. When you hear Iran say, ‘Death to Israel,’ what’s the next phrase that they say, in conjunction to that? ‘Death to America,’” he notes. 

“When Hamas says they want to wipe Jews in Israel off the face of the planet, they also say, we want to wipe America, and Jews in America, off the face of the planet,” Mr. Morgan says. “So that should tell us that the threat that we face from global terrorism, from Islamic extremists, their commitment to do harm to the United States, is every bit as committed and unwavering as it was 22 years ago on 9/11.”

Since the start of President Biden’s term, more than 260 illegal migrants from terrorist watchlists have been apprehended, with several Iranians caught in the past two weeks, as Fox News reported. There are an estimated 1.6 million “known got-aways” — illegal migrants of all stripes who are believed to have slipped into the U.S. without being apprehended — and 2 million illegal immigrants have been “caught and released.” 

“If you think that the U.S. intelligence mechanism is infallible, we’re living in a dream world. And what happened in Israel should wake us up,” Mr. Morgan says. After spending 20 years in the FBI, including during 9/11, when the U.S. says it has “no credible intelligence of any bad acts to the United States, what I hear is, we just don’t know,” he says. 

Previous conflicts in the Middle East have taught us that homegrown violent extremists use propaganda to inspire those with similar ideologies to take action, he says, which could lead to additional security threats from within our borders.

“We literally could have a sleeper cell in the United States, planning the next terrorist attack right now, we would have no idea,” Mr. Morgan warns. What’s unfolded in recent days shows a “disgusting, horrific, unspeakable support of Hamas,” not anything to do with the Palestinian people or perceived occupation issues, he says. 

The many people in America who have been supporting Hamas, “an organization that intentionally targeted innocent, non-combat civilians, lopped off the heads of babies, savagely raped women and videotaped it, killed women and children in front of their family and vice versa,” is a major national security concern, Mr. Morgan says. 

“There’s no way that every single one of those people in our country that’s supporting Hamas was a natural born U.S. citizen,” he says, adding that many Hamas supporters are people who were let into America or snuck in illegally. The pro-Hamas ideology can lead to radicalization and then action, he says. 

Terrorist groups can “exploit the ideology that’s going on right now in our country, and then move them from their ideology to radicalization, and then inspire them to action,” he says, adding that no one knows how extensive the homegrown violence will be or when it will occur. 

“I think it’s a real possibility that we’re in trouble, that the threat is already here,” says Mr. Morgan. “And our borders are still wide open for the threat to continue to come in.”