Kash Patel took the stage in Temecula with a brace on his right arm.
Facing an audience of Donald Trump supporters clad in red, white and blue and Make America Great Again caps, he quipped — using profanity — that he’d injured it fighting the Deep State. The crowd, gathered for a Christian conservative committee fundraiser, cheered.
Destroying the Deep State — a term used by conservatives to describe an alleged conspiracy by federal bureaucrats against Trump — is a passion for Patel, the incoming president’s pick to lead the FBI.
During his Temecula visit in May, Patel attacked undocumented immigrants and President Joe Biden’s immigration policy during an interview with conservative southwest Riverside County Pastor Tim Thompson.
His comments, framing those crossing the border illegally as terrorists and criminals preying upon U.S. citizens, run counter to data on immigration and comments from immigration policy analysts.
“There is so much misrepresentation in his comments,” said Cecilia Menjivar, a University of Southern California sociologist who studies immigration.
A lawyer and former federal prosecutor, Patel, 44, served in various roles in the first Trump White House. He’s known for his devout loyalty to Trump, even writing a children’s book — “The Plot Against the King” — to describe what he considers efforts by “Hillary Queenton” and others to destroy the Trump family.
To head the nation’s top federal law enforcement agency, Patel would need Senate confirmation and for current FBI Director Christopher Wray to resign or be fired. Critics fear a Patel-led FBI would become a political weapon aimed at exacting revenge on Trump’s enemies, including Democrats, officials from the first Trump administration and journalists.
Patel joined the president’s son, Eric Trump, and Trump attorney Alina Habba as headliners for a May 22 fundraiser at the Stampede country music venue in Old Town Temecula for the Inland Empire Family PAC, which seeks to elect Christian conservatives to school board seats.
Thompson, the PAC’s public face, hosts conservative media figures on his show, “Our Watch With Tim Thompson.” Patel briefly appeared on the program in a broadcast posted to YouTube on May 29.
“I really enjoyed my time with Kash,” Thompson said via email. “Given the level of leadership he has risen to, he interacts with people in humility, not treating anyone as though they are beneath him. He made my entire team feel valued.”
Thompson added: “Mr. Patel has a genuine love and concern for American citizens. It comes across very clear in his words and his actions. I expect big changes within the FBI once he takes on that position.”
On Thompson’s show, Patel criticized Biden and the FBI for taking a “defensive approach” to border security that put Americans at risk.
“We’ve had an invasion (on) our border for three years,” Katel told Thompson. “We’ve known we’ve had hundreds of known terrorists come across and … the FBI told us (we) lost them, so now you’re trying to pass the buck.”
Since 1975, no American has been killed or injured in a terrorist attack in the U.S. involving someone who crossed the border illegally, according to Alex Nowrasteh, vice president for economic and social policy studies at the Cato Institute.
Between 1975 and 2023, nine foreign-born terrorists entered the U.S. illegally — five through Canada, three through Mexico and one as a stowaway on a ship — with three who entered as children arrested as adults in a plot to attack Fort Dix, New Jersey, Nowrasteh said in written testimony to a House of Representatives committee in September.
Also between 1975 and 2023, 13 terrorists who came to the U.S. as asylum applicants are responsible for nine murders and about 669 injuries on U.S. soil, Nowrasteh wrote.
He added: “The annual chance of being murdered by a foreign-born terrorist who entered as an asylum applicant or who was granted asylum shortly after entering is about 1 in 1.5 billion per year.”
From October 2020 to November 2023, the names of 312 migrants, out of more than 6.2 million who crossed the southern border, triggered matches on the U.S. terrorist watch list, The New York Times reported in January.
“The watch list is a vast intelligence database with more than two million names of known terrorists and suspects,” the Times reported. “The list also includes people with ties to them, like family members, many of whom are not considered to be involved in terrorist activity.”
Rather than coming as terrorists, “the overwhelming majority of people who have arrived at the border … are fleeing conditions of violence in their home countries,” said Menjivar, the USC sociology professor.
Undocumented immigrants are statistically less likely to commit crimes, a recent National Institute of Justice study shows.
An analysis of Texas arrest records found that “undocumented immigrants are arrested at less than half the rate of native-born U.S. citizens for violent and drug crimes and a quarter the rate of native-born citizens for property crimes,” according to a news release on the study.
Patel said that during Trump’s first term, the president “had an agenda that was ‘Secure America and Americans’ and do it here and do it overseas as well where we are and where our allies are. And when the Biden administration came in, they just said ‘We’re doing the opposite. Open the border.’”
They said “’Once illegals come across, we’re not going to follow them. Once criminals come across, we’re going to let them do whatever they want, and they’re going to be able to move into our communities. We’re going to give them voter ID,’” Patel said.
During Trump’s first term, immigrant deportations “fell lower than most years of his Democratic predecessor Barack Obama,” Reuters reported in 2023.
At first, Biden “had even fewer deportations than Trump during his first two years in office,” Reuters reported. But as more migrants arrived at the border, “(Biden) greatly increased deportations — including those of families — in federal fiscal year 2023 and the first five months of the 2024 fiscal year, outpacing Trump.”
Menjivar said: “The Biden administration did not have an open border policy at all. In fact, it was very restricted.”
Undocumented immigrants cannot vote in U.S. elections, and “there is no evidence that unauthorized immigrants, green-card holders, or immigrants on temporary visas are voting in significant numbers,” according to the Migration Policy Institute, an immigration think tank.
With some exceptions — certain Haitians and Cubans, for example — those entering the U.S. illegally are not eligible for federal benefits, The Associated Press reported.
“Refugees and people granted asylum, as well as some other humanitarian migrants, are entitled to certain public benefits, including cash assistance related to their initial resettlement, though it is not as high as $2,200 each month” as rumored in social media, according to an AP fact check.
Patel’s comments aside, it’s unclear how much influence he would have on immigration and border security in the second Trump administration.
With the exception of working with U.S. consulates in other countries to flag potential problems, the FBI “has no direct involvement in U.S. border security or anything that happens at the border,” Menjivar said.
