Todd Bensman is a Senior Research Fellow for the Border Security and Immigration Center at The Heritage Foundation. Before joining Heritage in July 2026, Bensman served the Trump Administration as Senior Adviser to the US Department of Homeland Security (ICE Office of Director) and the Intelligence Community as a National Counterterrorism Center detailee where he served senior leadership on priority policy matters related to enforcing both legal and illegal immigration, southern border security, and the counter-cartel campaigns.

From 20018-2025, Bensman served as Senior National Security Fellow for the Center for Immigration Studies for which he traveled extensively throughout Latin America and produced research-based reports about the 2021-2025 mass migration crisis over the southern border. A former newspaper reporter of 23 years, Bensman authored the investigative book OVERRUN, How Joe Biden Unleashed the Greatest Border Crisis in U.S. History (Posthill Press/Bombardier Books, February 2023) and also America’s Covert Border War: The Untold Story of the Nation’s Battle to Prevent Jihadist Infiltration (Posthill Press/Bombardier Books, February 2021).

For nearly a decade through 2018, Bensman led counterterrorism intelligence for the Texas Department of Public Safety’s Intelligence and Counterterrorism Division and its multi-agency fusion center.

Before his homeland security service, Bensman worked as a reporter for more than two decades, as a foreign war correspondent and later covered domestic national security after 9/11 as an investigative staff writer for major newspapers, at home and also abroad in more than 40 countries, earning two National Press Club awards for foreign reporting.

He holds an M.A. in Security Studies from the Naval Postgraduate School, Center for Homeland Defense and Security (2015, Outstanding Thesis designee) and an M.A. in Journalism from the University of Missouri School of Journalism (2009).