Department of Homeland Security officials are aware of more than 400 illegal immigrants who were smuggled into the United States at the southern border by an ISIS-affiliated network — most of whom remain at large in the country, according to a new report.
Federal law enforcement is internally tracking and arresting migrants who were released into the U.S. after being encountered at the U.S.-Mexico border. To date, 150 of the 400 have been found and arrested in communities nationwide, but the whereabouts of 50 others are unknown, according to NBC News.
The report would seem to validate the national security concerns some Republican politicians have expressed in the three years since the number of migrants coming across the southern border spiked.
“We know for a fact that dangerous cartels and gangs have used our broken borders as a means to enter the United States. Now, we have confirmation that terrorist-related networks are using similar tactics to smuggle people into our country,” Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-TX) said in a statement Wednesday morning. “Every light is blinking red. We cannot continue to put border security on the back burner—that goes for both the Biden administration and Congress.”
Republicans blame President Joe Biden reversing all of the Trump administration’s immigration policies upon assuming office, though the president has since tacked to the right on the border.
The remaining 200 migrants known to be smuggled by the ISIS-linked network are being monitored and could soon be arrested. They are believed to have been brought into the country from Central Asia and elsewhere. --->READ MORE HERE
The Department of Homeland Security has identified over 400 immigrants from Central Asia and elsewhere who crossed into the U.S. in the past three years as “subjects of concern” because they were brought by an ISIS-affiliated human smuggling network, three U.S. officials tell NBC News.
While over 150 of them have been arrested, the whereabouts of over 50 remain unknown, the officials said, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement is looking to arrest them on immigration charges when they are located.
One of the U.S. officials said people affiliated with ISIS are operating as human smugglers in Central Asia and helping people there leave their countries and travel to the West, where they are then smuggled into the U.S. It is not known whether the human smuggling activity directly funds ISIS activity or whether ISIS members are making personal money through human smuggling on the side, the U.S. official said.
The official added that the U.S. has no indication that the more than 400 migrants brought to the U.S. by the network have plans to carry out terrorism in the U.S., but immigration agents are looking to arrest them out of an abundance of caution.
“In this case, it was the information that suggested a potential tie to ISIS because of some of the individuals involved in [smuggling migrants to the border] that led us to want to take extra care,” said a senior Biden administration official, “and out of an abundance of caution make sure that we exercised our authority in the most expansive and appropriate way to mitigate risk because of this potential connection being made.”
The official added that since ICE began arresting migrants brought to the U.S. by the ISIS-linked smuggling group several months ago, no information has emerged tying them to a threat to the U.S. homeland.
Many of the more than 400 migrants crossed the southern border and were released into the U.S. by Customs and Border Protection because they were not on the government’s terrorism watchlist, according to the three officials, and the agency did not have information raising concerns at the time.
But recent terrorist attacks in Russia have fueled heightened concern about ISIS and its offshoot ISIS-K. In recent months, DHS has been looking more closely at migrants from Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Moldova, Kyrgyzstan, Georgia and Russia, countries where ISIS-K has been active. --->READ MORE HERE
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