Members of ISIS — the bloodthirsty Islamic terror group that executed American journalist James Foley — are likely already in the United States, Sen. Dan Coats told
Newsmax TV on Thursday.
Coats, an Indiana Republican and member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, is calling for a doubling of TSA agents at the nation's airports in a bid to keep more terrorists out.
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"It's very possible that there are people here … and others may try to come," Coats told "The Steve Malzberg Show."
"We can't afford to not be concerned … It's very possible that there are people here. We need to understand that they only have to be right once. We have to be right 100 percent of the time …
"We should redouble on our Border Patrol, redouble on our TSA agents and everything else that's connected with providing security for our homeland."
Coats called the reign of terror by ISIS "pure barbarism." Aside from the execution of Foley, the group has been slaughtering Christians throughout Iraq in a bid to create an Islamic religious state.
"We're dealing with an element that we have not seen before. It's almost like going back to the Middle Ages," he said.
"This is going to have to take the world's right response and a lot of that has to come from the Muslims and the Muslim nation themselves in terms of what is happening to them. They're also being murdered.
"The Western nations can't simply come over as we've shown and tell them this is what you got to do. They've got something in their own back yard."
Coats said the chances of ISIS sympathizers gaining entry into the United States through European countries are dangerously real.
"We know many of these people who have joined ISIS, who are perpetuating these things, are from European nations, and some are from the United States," he said.
"We need to relook at these waiver programs for European countries because these people are now legitimate citizens of those states and that gives them entrance to the United States that they wouldn't have had otherwise."
Coats believes the White House should not have revealed details of an earlier U.S. rescue attempt of Foley that failed.
"I can't come to any other conclusion [other] than it's political. No, that was a stupid thing to do," he said.
"The worst thing you'd want to do is publicize your failure or publicize how you operate. That just makes it difficult for these guys in the future."