The Claim

Blocked more than 10,000 individuals with narcoterrorism or cartel ties from entering the country

The Claim, Unpacked

What is literally being asserted?

Three distinct assertions: (1) more than 10,000 individuals were “blocked” from entering the country; (2) these individuals had ties to “narcoterrorism or cartels”; (3) the blocking constitutes a border security achievement.

What is being implied but not asserted?

That 10,000 dangerous narcoterrorists attempted to enter the United States and were stopped at the border. That the country faced a narcoterrorism threat of this scale. That “narcoterrorism” and “cartel ties” describe the same kind of threat as traditional terrorism. That the screening system identified genuine threats rather than casting a wide net. That prior administrations allowed these individuals to enter. That “blocked” means physically stopped at a port of entry.

What is conspicuously absent?

Any definition of “blocked” — which the administration’s own officials define to include visa revocations, arrests, deportations, and even “investigations,” not just denial of entry at a border. Any acknowledgment that the 10,000 figure only exists because the administration first redesignated cartels as terrorist organizations, thereby expanding the terrorism watchlist to include cartel members and associates. Any disclosure that CBP’s own data shows only 4,084 terrorism-related encounters at ports of entry and between ports of entry in FY2025 — far below 10,000. Any mention that the administration itself acknowledged “less than five traditional terrorists” attempted U.S. entry in 2025. Any discussion of the standards used to determine “cartel ties” — how loose is the association? Any mention that the NCTC director who oversaw this program resigned and was previously implicated in pressuring analysts to change intelligence assessments.

Evidence Assessment

Established Facts

The administration designated eight cartels and criminal organizations as Foreign Terrorist Organizations on February 20, 2025. Executive Order 14157, signed January 20, 2025, directed the Secretary of State to designate cartels as FTOs. Secretary Rubio designated eight entities: the Sinaloa Cartel, CJNG, Cartel del Noreste, Gulf Cartel, La Nueva Familia Michoacana, Carteles Unidos, MS-13, and Tren de Aragua. The designations took effect February 20, 2025, when published in the Federal Register. This was an unprecedented use of FTO designation for organizations motivated primarily by economic gain rather than political ideology. [^019-a1]

CBP’s own data shows 4,084 terrorism-related screening encounters in FY2025 — not 10,000. CBP’s Terrorist Screening Dataset (TSDS) encounter data for FY2025 shows 4,011 encounters at land ports of entry (OFO) and 73 between ports of entry (USBP), for a combined total of 4,084. The OFO figure (4,011) represents a tenfold increase over FY2024 (410) and is the highest on record, but this spike directly correlates with the February 2025 FTO designation expanding the watchlist, not with an actual increase in terrorism-related travelers. Prior to the FTO designation, OFO terrorism encounters ranged from 157 (FY2021) to 564 (FY2023). [^019-a2]

The 10,000 figure comes from a single Fox News exclusive citing DNI Tulsi Gabbard and an anonymous “senior counterterrorism official.” DNI Gabbard stated: “In 2025, intelligence shared by our team to federal, state and local partners stopped more than 10,000 persons with connections to terrorism from accessing our country.” The figure was attributed to the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC). It has not been independently verified by any other outlet, government report, or fact-checker. No breakdown by category, nationality, cartel affiliation, or specific action was provided. [^019-a3]

“Blocked” is defined to include visa revocations, arrests, deportations, and investigations — not just denial of entry. The anonymous senior official stated: “Because of watchlisting work and designation, these 10,000 have been denied access” through “visa revocations, arrests, deportations or investigations.” This means someone who was merely investigated but never arrested, charged, or deported could be counted toward the 10,000. The claim says “blocked…from entering the country,” implying physical denial of entry — the official definition is far broader. [^019-a4]

The administration acknowledged “less than five traditional terrorists” attempted U.S. entry in 2025. The same Fox News report quotes the senior official as saying the administration saw “less than five traditional terrorists” attempting to access the United States, with those individuals attempting entry through commercial airlines. This confirms the remaining ~10,000 are not “traditional terrorists” but rather individuals reclassified as terrorism-linked through the cartel FTO designation. [^019-a5]

The NCTC added 85,000+ identities to the terrorism watchlist in 2025, overwhelmingly cartel-related. NCTC added over 21,000 cartel members and associates to the classified terrorist database within the first month of the FTO designation. By August 2025, 35,000+ identities had been created, and 6,525 individuals had been “denied from entering the United States.” By year’s end, 85,000+ total identities had been added. This massive expansion of the watchlist mechanically increases the number of “terrorism-related encounters.” [^019-a6]

The FTO designation makes anyone who provided “material support” to designated cartels inadmissible. Under INA Section 212(a)(3)(B), the terrorism-related inadmissibility grounds (TRIG), material support encompasses “a safe house, transportation, counterfeit documents, or funds” plus “any action that can assist a terrorist organization,” including providing food, setting up tents, distributing literature, or making a small monetary contribution. This means migrants who paid smuggling fees to cartels, individuals coerced into working for cartels, or even low-level drug purchasers could be flagged as having “cartel ties.” [^019-a7]

Strong Inferences

The 10,000 figure is an artifact of definitional expansion, not a security achievement. The sequence is: (1) designate cartels as terrorist organizations; (2) add tens of thousands of cartel members, associates, and affiliates to the terrorism watchlist; (3) screen travelers against the expanded watchlist; (4) count the matches as “blocked narcoterrorists.” The 10,000 figure tells us the watchlist was expanded, not that 10,000 narcoterrorists were thwarted. Before the FTO designation, CBP encountered 410 terrorism-related individuals at ports of entry in all of FY2024. The ten-fold increase to 4,011 in FY2025 tracks the watchlist expansion, not a change in who is traveling. [^019-a8]

The gap between CBP’s 4,084 and NCTC’s 10,000 suggests the higher figure counts actions beyond border encounters. CBP’s own TSDS encounter data — the most direct measure of “blocked from entering” — shows 4,084 encounters. The NCTC figure of 10,000 includes visa revocations (which occur at consulates abroad, not at the border), domestic arrests and deportations (of people already in the country, not “entering”), and investigations (of people who may never have been charged). Claiming these as “blocked from entering the country” mischaracterizes most of the counted actions. [^019-a9]

The NCTC’s analytical integrity during this period is questionable. NCTC Director Joe Kent, who oversaw the cartel watchlisting program, was implicated in pressuring intelligence analysts to change their assessment of Tren de Aragua to align with White House claims about the group’s connection to Venezuela’s government. Two veteran analysts were fired after refusing to amend their findings. Kent later resigned over the Iran conflict. If NCTC leadership was willing to apply political pressure on intelligence assessments about cartel operations, the same pressures may have influenced the standards for who qualified as having “cartel ties” on the watchlist. [^019-a10]

Informed Speculation

The claim is the fourth in a sequence (Items 16-19) that constructs a narrative of targeted security enforcement: 100,000 visas revoked for fraud/crime/security (Item 16), visas revoked from pro-Hamas agitators (Item 17), visa processing paused for 75 high-risk countries (Item 18), and 10,000 narcoterrorists blocked (Item 19). Read together, these create the impression of a government surgically identifying and neutralizing threats. The reality revealed by evidence in each case is different: most visa revocations were for overstays and DUIs, the pro-Hamas revocations were found unconstitutional, the 75-country pause was about welfare not security, and the “narcoterrorists” are largely an artifact of reclassifying cartel members as terrorists.

The term “narcoterrorism” itself is doing critical rhetorical work. Drug trafficking and terrorism are legally and operationally distinct phenomena — the UN Special Rapporteur on Counter-Terrorism has explicitly stated they are “distinct phenomena to which different legal frameworks should apply.” By fusing them into a single term, the administration borrows the emotional and political power of “terrorism” and applies it to drug cartels, justifying the use of intelligence community tools, military authority, and terrorism-related immigration bars against a much broader population than traditional counterterrorism ever targeted.

Structural Analysis

Definitional manipulation (the core mechanism). This claim works by a three-step definitional sleight of hand: (1) Redefine cartels as terrorist organizations. (2) Redefine cartel members, associates, and anyone who provided “material support” as terrorism-linked. (3) Count every encounter with these newly-terrorism-linked individuals as a “blocked narcoterrorist.” The underlying reality has not changed — the same people who would have been flagged as drug traffickers or gang members under prior frameworks are now counted as “narcoterrorists.” What changed is the label, not the threat.

The denominator problem. CBP processes approximately 1 million entries per day at ports of entry. In FY2025, OFO had 437,723 total encounters. Even the inflated 4,011 terrorism-related encounters represent 0.92% of OFO encounters. The 73 between-port encounters represent 0.0287% of USBP encounters. The “10,000” number sounds large in isolation but represents a tiny fraction of border traffic — and most of those 10,000 were not encountered at the border at all (per the gap between CBP’s 4,084 and NCTC’s 10,000).

Cui bono. The narcoterrorism framing serves multiple political purposes: (a) it justifies the FTO designation of cartels, which unlocks military authority, intelligence tools, and financial sanctions; (b) it connects immigration enforcement to the popular cause of fighting terrorism; (c) it positions any criticism as being “soft on terrorism”; (d) it generates large, impressive-sounding numbers that can be presented as security achievements. The primary beneficiary of the framing is the administration’s political narrative, not public safety.

Follow the legal trail. The FTO designation created a legal cascade: EO 14157 (January 20, 2025) directed the designation. The State Department acted on February 20, 2025. NCTC began mass-watchlisting cartel identities. An unpublished August 2025 Presidential order authorized military force against designated cartels. FinCEN issued orders against Mexican financial institutions. Material support indictments followed. The “10,000 blocked” claim is one data point in a much larger legal and military architecture built on the terrorism designation — an architecture that would not exist if cartels were treated under existing drug trafficking and organized crime frameworks.

The attribution problem. Cartel members have always been subject to screening at ports of entry. Prior to the FTO designation, they were screened through TECS, NCIC, and drug trafficking databases. The FTO designation did not create new intelligence about cartel members — it reclassified existing intelligence into terrorism databases. Many of the 10,000 “blocked” individuals would have been flagged under the prior framework as well, just under different legal categories.

Context the Framing Omits

Cartels were already subject to extensive enforcement before the FTO designation. The Kingpin Act, IEEPA sanctions, OFAC designations, and drug trafficking statutes already provided tools to target cartel members and their finances. The DEA, FBI, and CBP already maintained databases of cartel members. The FTO designation did not fill an enforcement gap — it rebranded existing enforcement as counterterrorism.

The terrorism watchlist has well-documented accuracy problems. The TSDB has grown to approximately 2 million identities and is known to include false positives based on name matches and birth date similarities. The “reasonable suspicion” standard for watchlisting is lower than probable cause. When 85,000 new identities are added in a single year — more than doubling the pace of previous additions — the risk of false positives and overbroad inclusion increases.

The FTO designation creates severe collateral damage to migrants and asylum seekers. Under TRIG, anyone who provided “material support” to a designated FTO becomes permanently inadmissible. Given that cartels control virtually all smuggling routes into the United States, migrants who paid smuggling fees — often their only option for crossing — are now classified as having provided “material support to a terrorist organization.” Asylum seekers fleeing cartel violence face a paradox: their contact with the cartels they fled may make them inadmissible.

CBP’s own historical data shows the 10x increase is a watchlist effect, not a threat increase. OFO terrorism encounters at ports of entry were: 333 (FY2017), 351 (FY2018), 538 (FY2019), 196 (FY2020), 157 (FY2021), 380 (FY2022), 564 (FY2023), 410 (FY2024), 4,011 (FY2025). The FY2025 number is not just an increase — it is a structural break caused by the watchlist expansion. USBP between-port encounters actually decreased from 106 (FY2024) to 73 (FY2025), suggesting fewer terrorism-related individuals are crossing between ports, not more.

The NCTC director who generated these numbers was later implicated in political interference with intelligence. Joe Kent’s pressure on analysts regarding Tren de Aragua assessments, and the subsequent firing of analysts who refused to align their findings with White House claims, raises fundamental questions about the analytical standards applied to watchlisting and screening decisions under his leadership.

The UN Special Rapporteur on Counter-Terrorism has condemned the narcoterrorism framework. Professor Ben Saul, UN Special Rapporteur, has stated that terrorism and organized crime are “distinct phenomena to which different legal frameworks should apply” and that the U.S. designation enables unlawful extraterritorial military operations. UN experts communicated concerns (USA 14/2025) about designating organized crime groups as terrorist organizations.

Verdict

Factual core: The 10,000 figure has not been independently verified — it comes from a single Fox News exclusive citing DNI Gabbard and an anonymous official. CBP’s own TSDS encounter data shows 4,084 terrorism-related encounters in FY2025 (a meaningful but much smaller number). Even taking the 10,000 at face value, “blocked” includes visa revocations, arrests, deportations, and mere investigations — not just denial of entry at the border.

The claim is misleading on three levels:

1. The number is unverified and inflated. The only source for “10,000” is a Fox News exclusive with no independent corroboration. CBP’s own data shows 4,084. The gap is filled by counting visa revocations (consular actions abroad), domestic arrests/deportations (people already here), and investigations (people who may never have been charged) as “blocking from entering the country.”

2. “Narcoterrorism or cartel ties” is a manufactured category. The administration designated cartels as terrorist organizations on Day One, expanded the terrorism watchlist by 85,000+ identities, and then counted encounters with the newly-expanded watchlist as a counterterrorism achievement. The administration itself acknowledged “less than five traditional terrorists” attempted U.S. entry in 2025. The 10,000 are not terrorists in any conventional sense — they are cartel members, associates, and individuals with loose connections who were reclassified as terrorism-linked through a definitional change.

3. “Blocked from entering” mischaracterizes the actions counted. The official definition of “denied access” includes investigations, which do not block anyone from anything. It includes visa revocations (a consular action, not a border action) and domestic deportations (of people already in the country). The phrase “blocked from entering the country” implies physical prevention at a border — the counted actions are far more varied and diffuse.

Framing as “win”: Misleading. The claim presents a manufactured metric as a security achievement. The administration created the “narcoterrorism” category by designating cartels as FTOs, expanded the watchlist by 85,000+ names, and then counted the screening results as a “win.” This is equivalent to redefining jaywalking as a felony, arresting jaywalkers, and then announcing a crackdown on felons. The underlying enforcement actions may be legitimate, but the claim that 10,000 “narcoterrorists” were “blocked from entering” is a product of definitional manipulation, not a security breakthrough.

What a reader should understand: The administration designated drug cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations in February 2025 — an unprecedented move. It then directed the National Counterterrorism Center to add cartel members and associates to terrorism databases, producing 85,000+ new watchlist entries. When the newly-expanded watchlist generated screening hits, the administration counted them as “blocked narcoterrorists.” CBP’s own data shows 4,084 terrorism-related encounters in FY2025 — up tenfold from FY2024, but entirely because the watchlist was expanded, not because more terrorists arrived. The administration itself acknowledged fewer than five “traditional terrorists” attempted U.S. entry all year. The claim takes a definitional change (reclassifying cartel members as terrorists), adds an overbroad counting method (including investigations, visa revocations abroad, and domestic arrests as “blocking from entering”), and presents the result as a border security achievement. The underlying reality — screening travelers against intelligence databases — is legitimate and routine. The claim’s distortion lies in relabeling it as counterterrorism and inflating the numbers.

Cross-References

• Item #7: “Cut fentanyl trafficking at the southern border by 56%” — shared cartel and narcotics context; same tendency to claim credit for trends driven by external factors (Sinaloa civil war, China precursor regulations)
• Item #16: “Revoked over 100,000 visas” — visa revocations counted toward the 10,000 “blocked” figure here may overlap with the 100,000 visa revocations; shared pattern of expansive counting
• Item #18: “Paused visa processing for 75 high-risk countries” — completes the four-claim immigration enforcement sequence (Items 16-19); same pattern of security framing for non-security actions

Sources

Fox News Digital. “US blocks 10K narco-terrorists as terror watchlist swells by 85K in 2025.” January 14, 2026. https://www.foxnews.com/politics/us-blocks-10k-narcoterrorists-terror-watchlist-swells-85k-2025

U.S. Customs and Border Protection. “CBP Enforcement Statistics Fiscal Year 2025.” Ongoing. https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/cbp-enforcement-statistics-fy2025

U.S. Customs and Border Protection. “CBP Enforcement Statistics Fiscal Year 2024.” https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/cbp-enforcement-statistics-fy2024

U.S. Customs and Border Protection. “CBP Enforcement Statistics Fiscal Year 2023.” https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/cbp-enforcement-statistics-fy2023

Office of the Director of National Intelligence. “NCTC Supports Law Enforcement, Disrupts FTO-Designated Cartels and Gangs.” August 25, 2025. https://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/press-releases/press-releases-2025/4103-pr-27-25

Office of the Director of National Intelligence. “FIRST 100 DAYS: DNI GABBARD PRIORITIZES INTELLIGENCE EFFORTS TO SECURE THE SOUTHERN BORDER.” April 2025. https://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/press-releases/press-releases-2025/4068-pr-07-25

The White House. “Designating Cartels And Other Organizations As Foreign Terrorist Organizations And Specially Designated Global Terrorists.” Executive Order 14157. January 20, 2025. https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/designating-cartels-and-other-organizations-as-foreign-terrorist-organizations-and-specially-designated-global-terrorists/

Federal Register. “Specially Designated Global Terrorist Designations of Tren de Aragua, Mara Salvatrucha, Cartel de Sinaloa, et al.” February 20, 2025. https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/02/20/2025-02870/specially-designated-global-terrorist-designations-of-tren-de-aragua-mara-salvatrucha-cartel-de

Brennan Center for Justice. “The Dangerous Sweep of Trump’s Plan to Designate Cartels as Terrorist Organizations.” 2025. https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/dangerous-sweep-trumps-plan-designate-cartels-terrorist-organizations

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. “Terrorism-Related Inadmissibility Grounds (TRIG).” Ongoing. https://www.uscis.gov/laws-and-policy/other-resources/terrorism-related-inadmissibility-grounds-trig

PolitiFact. “Ask PolitiFact: How many people on the terrorist watchlist have been stopped at the border?” October 27, 2023. https://www.politifact.com/article/2023/oct/27/ask-politifact-how-many-people-on-the-terrorist-wa/

Just Security. “The United States’ Dirty War on ‘Narco Terrorism.’” 2025. https://www.justsecurity.org/121115/united-states-dirty-war-narcoterrorism/

Control Risks. “A Year After Designation of Cartels as Terrorists, What Is the Risk Landscape?” March 11, 2026. https://www.controlrisks.com/our-thinking/insights/a-year-after-designation-of-cartels-as-terrorists

NBC News. “National Counterterrorism Center director resigns over Iran war.” 2026. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/national-counterterrorism-center-resigns-iran-war-rcna263692

Al Jazeera. “2025: Trump’s year of ‘emergency’, ‘invasion’ and ‘narcoterrorism.’” December 29, 2025. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/12/29/2025-trumps-year-of-emergency-invasion-and-narcoterrorism