The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has identified more than 400 migrants who entered the country with the help of an ISIS-affiliated human smuggling network over the past three years, NBC News has reported, citing unnamed officials. The sources told the media, however, there is no indication that the people in question have plans to carry out terrorist attacks.
The US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency reported 736 intercepts of people on the nation’s terrorist watchlist in the government’s latest fiscal year, which ended on September 30. That figure stood at 199 in Donald Trump’s last full fiscal year in office. According to CBP data, the trend has continued unchanged in the current fiscal year.
In total, nearly 2.5 million illegal aliens were encountered by US authorities at the nation’s borders in the last fiscal year.
In its report on Wednesday, NBC News quoted an anonymous US official as saying that individuals affiliated with ISIS operate human-trafficking rings in Central Asia. According to the media outlet, 150 of these migrants have been arrested and deported, and some may have already left the US of their own accord. However, the whereabouts of around 50 remain unknown, according to the article.
The sources told NBC News that none of those deported had been charged with terrorism-related offenses, with the US authorities seeing no indication that those 400 migrants had any malicious plans in the first place.
However, the information that those individuals were potentially connected to ISIS prompted authorities to “make sure that we exercised our authority in the most expansive and appropriate way to mitigate risk,” the media outlet quoted an unnamed senior Biden administration official as saying.
In an unrelated case earlier this month, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) apprehended eight Tajik men in New York, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles who were believed to be linked to ISIS.
In June, Republican frontrunner for November’s presidential election, Donald Trump, accused President Joe Biden of “providing material support for terrorism” over his perceived failure to stop the migrant influx at the US-Mexico border.
Several GOP lawmakers have voiced similar criticisms, with billionaire Elon Musk predicting back in April that the current lax border control policies could lead to an attack matching the one that occurred on September 11, 2001.