19/03/24
Terror watchlisted migrant criminal from Colombia arrested at Texas border
A Colombian national was found to be a “positive match” on the terror watchlist and identified as a former member of the Revolutionary Forces of Colombia (FARC) after he was arrested for illegally crossing the southern border, The Post can reveal.
Jerminton Genaro-Quinones Carvajal — who was arrested near El Paso, Texas, on March 8 — admitted to previously overseeing the “transportation of goods and unmarked crates” which he knew sometimes contained firearms, ammunition and cocaine for the FARC, according to an exclusively obtained internal US Border Patrol memo.
Carvajal told federal authorities he had “demobilized” from the FARC — described as one of Colombia’s most powerful violent dissident groups by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
A counter-terrorism report on the group by the US government says it conducts “armed assaults, assassinations, extortion operations, and hostage-takings,” largely against the Colombian government and military.
Carvajal’s arrest comes a day after The Post revealed a Lebanese migrant was caught sneaking over the border and admitted to being a member of the terror group Hezbollah, saying he wanted to go to New York and hoped to make a bomb.
Carvajal was also found to have been arrested for aggravated robbery. He served six months in prison and 52 months on house arrest, according to Border Patrol report, but it is unclear in which country he was sentenced and incarcerated.
Federal authorities secured prosecution for Carvajal for illegal entry into the US. He is being kept in custody until he has a court date to be sentenced on March 25, according to federal court papers.
The court papers also note Carvajal entered the US by swimming the Rio Grande. They also state he has no criminal history in the US, so his sentence will likely be no longer than six months in prison.
The Biden administration revoked the FARC’s terrorist designation in 2021, citing a 2016 treaty it had made with the Colombian government leading to it being “formally dissolved and disarmed.”
The US government had originally designated FARC as a terrorist organization in 1997.
Another terror watchlisted Colombian migrant crossed into the US illegally near Eagle Pass, Texas, on Feb. 21, just days before former President Donald Trump visited the area, another internal Border Patrol memo revealed.
In fiscal year 2022, border agents recorded 98 encounters with terror watchlisted individuals at both the northern and southern borders. That nearly doubled in fiscal year 2023, which ended Sept. 30, with 172 such encounters, according to federal data.
Between October and January, federal authorities nabbed 50 people whose names appear on the terror watchlist.
The Border Patrol’s encounters of terror watchlisted individuals between fiscal years 2017 and 2021 totaled just 30.
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