Following the arrests of eight immigrants with suspected ties to ISIS, one expert says the Biden administration has put the country in a dangerous “pre-9/11” position when it comes to counterterrorism.
“The Biden administration has done significant damage to the enforcement of our travel and immigration laws, both with federal agencies and with state and local law enforcement, and with foreign governments that refuse to share information with the United States,” Laura Reese, director of the Heritage Foundation’s Center on Border Security and Immigration, told Fox News Digital.
The statement came after eight Tajik nationals were arrested in a joint operation by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force earlier this week.
The arrests were made in New York, Los Angeles and Philadelphia, but a federal official familiar with the sting told Fox News that those arrested had illegally crossed the southern border into the US.
Authorities arrest eight suspected ISIS-linked terrorists in multi-city sting operations
President Biden speaks with U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials during a visit to the U.S.-Mexico border in El Paso, Texas, on January 8, 2023. (Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images)
Sources told Fox News that terrorism suspects are “thoroughly investigated” and that while nothing was flagged up when the eight suspects first crossed the border, damaging intelligence was later flagged up that raised national security concerns, including the suspects’ suspected ties to ISIS.
At least one of the people arrested in the sting was caught on a wiretap discussing how to make a bomb, the New York Post reported.
“Remember the Boston Marathon? [bombing]”They’re worried that something like this could happen again, or even worse,” a source familiar with the arrest told the New York Post.
Their illegal entry and subsequent release underscored growing concerns about the terrorism threat emanating from the southern border. Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.) has been sounding the alarm about this threat for months, even pointing to Central Asia, including Tajikistan, during a February press conference as a potential source of terrorists trying to infiltrate the United States.
Senator says arrests of 8 ISIS-linked migrants should be a wake-up call for President Biden on border crisis
In February, Senator Daines said he had been warned by “senior officials” that more than 50,000 Central Asians could be entering the US illegally in 2023, and expressed concern that some of them could be “part of sleeper cells plotting terrorist attacks against our country.”
Daines reinforced those concerns in the wake of the recent arrests, telling Fox News Digital that he hopes the news serves as a “wake-up call” for President Biden.
“I have been sounding the alarm for months that Joe Biden’s open southern border leaves our country vulnerable to potential terrorists,” Daines said. “This news should not come as a surprise, but if this isn’t a wake-up call for Biden and the Democratic Party, I don’t know what is.”
These concerns have been echoed by FBI Director Christopher Wray, who warned a Senate Appropriations subcommittee last week that a coordinated attack similar to the one carried out by the Islamic State of Khorasan Province (ISIS-K) on a Russian concert hall earlier this year could occur in the United States.
Rees believes part of the warning should be to encourage better information sharing between agencies when it comes to screening individuals crossing the border, arguing that some individuals, like those arrested this week, are able to slip through the gaps in screening.
FBI Director Christopher Wray. (Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
“It’s possible that an individual crossing the border may have no criminal history or may be coming from a country that doesn’t share criminal or terrorism information with the U.S. government,” Reese said. “That individual may then be subject to a U.S. investigation that could raise terrorism concerns.”
Rees said such information sharing has not yet occurred, noting that such issues have also been cited as reasons why the 9/11 attacks went undetected.
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“The 9/11 Commission identified some of these very issues as what led to the 9/11 terrorist attacks,” Rees said. “Biden has returned the United States to its pre-9/11 position.”
The White House did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
