Transcript: CBS News contributor Sam Vinograd on “Face the Nation,” June 16, 2024

The following is a transcript of an interview with CBS News contributor Sam Vinograd, a former Homeland Security official, on “Face the Nation,” which aired June 16, 2024.

MARGARET BRENNAN: We’re joined now by Samantha Vinograd, a former senior counterterrorism official at the Department of Homeland Security under President Biden and now she’s a national security contributor here at CBS. It’s good to have you back, I’d like you to help us digest some of what we talked about with the arrest of these eight individuals who traveled from Central Asia to the southern border and were arrested last week by the FBI and ICE. No derogatory information was found about them when they were initially collected. How thorough are the checks carried out by federal border agents?

SAMANTHA VINOGRAD: Well, Margaret, let me contextualize vetting, I was responsible for the screening and vetting policy at DHS, every individual encountered at our borders is vetted. What this means is that individuals’ identities are compared against certain datasets or watchlists of information related to terrorism and other derogatory information. However, scanning is only as good as the underlying content in these watchlists. And I believe we have few resources for the collection, analysis and distribution of information related to foreign terrorism, in a way that is negatively affecting the quality of those watch lists themselves. We have gaps when it comes to, for example, information about bad actors in Central Asia. So today, I am less concerned about an individual on our watch list who is somehow sneaking across our southern border than I am about a bad actor who is unknown to us. And that’s why we urgently need to prioritize deepening intelligence partnerships, with, for example, Central Asian countries, and ensure that we are fully exploiting all the information that has been gathered to date about bad actors, their travel patterns and more.

MARGARET BRENNAN: And when you say lack of resources, Congress controls the financial resources and the allocation of that, including Chairman Turner’s committee would have a say in that, correct?

VINOGRAD: Yes, it’s true. At the same time, the federal government has made decisions about other intelligence priorities, for example, great power competition with China and Russia has taken resources away from foreign terrorism priorities like ISIS and Al-Qaeda, and I believe it has led to something of a misjudgment of the objectives of what were previously seen as regional affiliates of ISIS, such as ISIS-K, ISIS-Khorasan, which we now assess, actually has global ambitions rather than remaining focused on Afghanistan, Pakistan and Central Asia.

MARGARET BRENNAN: And- and you raise an important point there: we just need to connect to the people, we no longer have a presence in Afghanistan and the intelligence capabilities that we had when there was a military presence on the ground. So those neighboring countries that we’re talking about, whether it’s Tajikistan or Uzbekistan, those are the places where you’re talking about ISIS-K emanating from, right?

VINOGRAD: Well, we lost what we call battlefield intelligence when we withdrew from Afghanistan and Iraq. We also know that ISIS has actually leveraged a global franchise model, so to speak, where it has built regional affiliates. For example, in parts of Central Asia, ISIS-K is a regional affiliate in that part of the world. But what we’re seeing now are these regional affiliates carrying out attacks across an increasingly larger geographic scope. What this means is that we need more and better information about individuals in these areas because they seek to cause harm. In Europe, we had a worldwide threat alert issued a few months ago by the State Department, as well as potentially here at home.

MARGARET BRENNAN: You asked the State Department to explain that the US and Turkey were sanctioning three individuals who had ties to ISIS-K and a network of human smugglers who were trying to bring people from here to the US. This brings us back to the southern border. You know, to what extent is this a vulnerability?

VINOGRAD: Well, Turkey has been a relatively uneven counterterrorism partner, but it has recently stepped up and taken some very important steps to sanction individuals who may pose a terrorism-related threat and to try to address some known facilitation routes for human smugglers. humans. Our southern border presents a security risk when it comes to bad actors trying to gain access to this country. To address the risks at our southern border, we need to ensure that federal agents have adequate resources. We need to ensure once again that we have the correct information feeding into our watchlists. So we know what to watch out for, and we need to disincentivize individuals from trying to come here in the first place.

MARGARET BRENNAN: The same is true – given that the President has just received this executive order that can be challenged in court, but trying to end asylum and border crossing. Does he also have the authority to prevent travel from these areas of concern and specific countries?

Could he-

VINOGRAD: Well–

MARGARET BRENNAN: –do that?

VINOGRAD: Well, just to clarify, the President is not trying to stop asylum at the border, he is trying to restrict asylum between individuals’ ability to claim assignment – asylum between ports of entry – entry, which is a little different. . The President, under Section 212(f) of the Immigration Nationality Act, has the authority to restrict entry to certain noncitizens in specific circumstances. Trump has already used this authority during COVID. That’s the authority President Biden relies on in his latest executive order.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Could he target it more narrowly to those areas of concern? I mean, why is the information you say that feeds these watch lists so poor when it comes to a country like Tajikistan?

VINOGRAD: Well, again President Biden could try to use this authority to restrict travel by certain noncitizens in various circumstances. He could choose to go down that path, I think it would be challenged in court like this current executive order, but by the same token, I think it’s critical that he works, and I know the administration is doing this, to deepen intelligence cooperation with these countries. So, for example, last summer, we had this flow of threats that you mentioned emanating from Uzbekistan, and that led to a deep intelligence and law enforcement partnership between the United States and Uzbekistan. There were, for example, flights to remove Uzbek citizens back to Uzbekistan. I believe the same approach is being taken with Tajikistan, but this will take time. And simultaneously, we have Customs and Border Protection and ICE who have broad discretion to make operational changes at the border to, for example, detain all individuals from these countries instead of, for example, releasing them in their country of origin. .

MARGARET BRENNAN: Sam, it’s always great to have you here.

VINOGRAD: Thank you.

MARGARET BRENNAN: We’ll be right back.