A recent report said ISIS-linked networks have smuggled more than 400 illegal immigrants into the U.S., many of whom have been released by Customs and Border Protection under the Biden administration. NBC News.
A U.S. official told the news agency that the Department of Homeland Security has identified hundreds of illegal aliens from Central Asia and elsewhere who were brought into the United States illegally by smuggling groups linked to ISIS.
“We are working urgently to locate these individuals.”
Officials told NBC News that many of the 400 people were detained by CBP after illegally crossing the southern border and then released back into the country because they were not on the government’s terrorism watch list. More than 150 were arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Some of those arrested had previously been deported, authorities said.
The news agency reported that the whereabouts of 50 “persons of concern” remain unknown.
“The fact that its whereabouts were unknown is obviously disturbing,” Christopher O’Leary, a former head of the FBI’s counterterrorism division, told NBC News.
“I [U.S.] “The government is desperate to locate these people, and it’s not uncommon for them to abuse immigration laws,” O’Leary said. “They’re violating those laws. If they need to get someone off the streets, that’s a good way to do it.”
“In this case, the information suggested that some of the individuals involved had potential ties to ISIS,” a senior Biden administration official told NBC News. [smuggling migrants to the border] That’s what made us pay special attention to it.”
“And we will ensure that we have exercised our authority in the broadest and most appropriate manner, out of an abundance of caution, to mitigate the risks posed by this potential nexus,” the official said.
The official said there was no intelligence linking illegal immigration to a national security threat, and while some of the “persons of concern” have been charged with immigration offenses, none have been charged with terrorism-related offenses.
In response to the recent terrorist attacks in Russia, the Department of Homeland Security[] According to NBC News, the government is “increasingly scrutinizing” foreign nationals from countries where ISIS is active.
As previously reported by The Blaze News, a June report from the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General found that ICE released more than 11,000 “high flight risk” illegal immigrants into the U.S. between fiscal years 2022 and 2023. Of those, more than 300 were deemed “high risk to public safety.”
Another recent inspector general report found that the Department of Homeland Security’s illegal immigration screening process needed improvement and was “not sufficiently effective in screening and vetting aliens applying for admission to the United States or asylum seekers whose asylum cases have been pending for an extended period of time.”
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