Rep. Louie Gohmert said Tuesday he's not surprised by reports that nearly 200 unvetted immigrants received U.S. citizenship after their names were not checked against FBI databases.
"It's not surprising, but it is frightening for people that understand the level of intentional neglect," the Texas Republican told Fox News' "Fox & Friends" program. "I mean, if we were talking about liability under civil law, you'd say these people intentionally, knowingly, wantonly putting people in danger. It's insane."
Sunday, The Washington Times reported in all, 175 immigrants were approved for citizenship, but their names were not properly checked through the FBI databases for red flags that could have kept them out of being approved.
Homeland Security officials said computer error was at fault, affecting about 15,000 applications.
As a result, naturalization ceremonies already planned have been canceled, and citizenship applications have been halted, beginning on Nov. 29, when the problem was acknowledged through an internal email obtained by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte.
"Here's hundreds of people that must be deported, they're criminal aliens, got to get them out of the country," said Gohmert. "There are literally people who will be dying because of this level of incompetence."
Gohmert also called on the program for a wall along the Mexican border, but said there are places where a wall isn't needed.
"When you have the Rio Grande wide and people are coming across in any kind of floating devices, bringing them across, in those areas, you don't need a wall in the middle of the river," said Gohmert.
"I've been down there on the Texas Department of Public Safety boats when we were asked to get out of the way so that they could catch these people coming red-handed and so we did.
"I thought they would prevent them from coming in. They radioed, we welcome them all in and we process them. Those people we can see, it looked like they had drugs. We don't know where they are. The level of incompetence is outrageous."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
© 2026 Newsmax. All rights reserved.