There are more than 10,000 illegal aliens living in the United States who are from foreign countries that have been designated as state sponsors of terrorism by the State Department.

Newly obtained federal data from the Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI) reveals there to be over 10,000 illegal aliens living in the U.S. from countries that are state sponsors of terrorism, including Iran, North Korea, Syria, and Sudan.

All of the illegal aliens have either been already ordered deported by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) or have pending deportation orders, despite remaining in the U.S. The overwhelming majority of illegal aliens, once resettled in the interior of the country, are never deported. There are more than 1.7 million illegal aliens living in the U.S. who have not been deported despite having been ordered deported or having pending deportation orders.

In an exclusive interview with SiriusXM Patriot’s Breitbart News Tonight, IRLI Executive Director Dale Wilcox said the issue of having thousands of illegal aliens living in the U.S. from countries that sponsor terrorism is a “very dangerous situation.”

LISTEN:

Wilcox said:

We have 10,000 aliens … some of them are criminals and that’s why they’ve been ordered removed. You could have some that might have come into the country legally at some point. However, they’ve committed crimes and they’ve been ordered removed. [Emphasis added]

Then of course you have your garden variety of illegal aliens who have jumped the border or overstayed a legitimate visa. And they’ve been told to go home and yet they’re continuing to hide out in this country which only stresses the danger of sanctuary jurisdictions. [Emphasis added]

California has the largest population of Iranians outside of Iran. California is a sanctuary state. California is not cooperating with immigration authorities, so their sanctuary law is preventing ICE from removing these individuals. Of that number 10,000 … 6,000 of these individuals are Iranian. We’ve had hearings here recently in Congress where U.S. intelligence officials have stated there are Iranian sleeper cells inside the United States, ready and waiting for the order. [Emphasis added]

People have to understand how dangerous this is in these sanctuary cities because the first attack on the World Trade Center … the New York subway bombing conspiracy, and 9/11, all of these plots were perpetrated by immigration violators. This is a very dangerous situation. [Emphasis added]

Specifically, more than 6,000 — or 61 percent — of the 10,000 illegal aliens are from Iran, while 20 percent are from Syria, 18 percent are from Sudan, and less than one percent came illegally from North Korea.

“We saw on 9/11 the damage that only 19 sleeper cell terrorists could cause,” Wilcox said. “This is just the latest example of the disaster of sanctuary laws, which force ICE agents to operate with one hand tied behind their backs while making our communities inherently more dangerous.”

Despite sanctuary cities shielding all illegal aliens from deportation, regardless of their criminal history, ICE agents were able to deport on average about 44 illegal aliens in the last two fiscal years who were known or suspected terrorists.

As Breitbart News has chronicled, the Diversity Visa Lottery — which imports more than 50,000 random foreign nationals to the country every year through a random drawing — has brought nearly 30,000 legal immigrants to the U.S. in the last decade from countries designated as state-sponsors of terrorism. Roughly 30 percent of all Visa Lottery immigrants who have been brought to the country in the last five years have come from countries that sponsor terrorism.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.