ISIS Smuggled 400 Migrants Into United States, 150 Arrested and 50 At Large

By Hamodia Staff

Over 400 migrants were smuggled into the US by a human smuggling network affiliated with ISIS, according to the Department of Homeland Security, the New York Post reported. While more than 150 of these migrants from Central Asia and other places have been arrested, another 50 remain at large, three US officials told NBC News, and the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is trying to arrest the smugglers on immigration charges.

“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,”  a senior Biden administration official told NBC News, “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.”

While over the past few months ICE has been arresting migrants smuggled into the US by these rings, they stress that no information has tied them to threats against the US.

Many of these migrants have crossed the southern border and were subsequently released by Customs and Border Protection into the country because they were not on the government’s terrorism watchlist, officials said.

While the agency did not have information raising concerns at the time the migrants entered the country, recent terrorist attacks in Russia have caused heightened concern over ISIS and its.

As a result of recent terrorist attacks in Russia by citizens of Tajikistan who were members of the ISIS offshoot known as ISIS-K, the Department of Homeland Security has been monitoring migrants originating from Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Moldova, Kyrgyzstan, Georgia and Russia, where ISIS-K has been observed. 1,500 migrants come into the US between October 2020 and May 2024 from Tajikistan, and most were probably released and allowed to stay while they await a, asylum hearing.

Federal law enforcement agencies are “not panicking” about the group of people, but they have been identified as “subjects of concern,” and are prioritizing them for arrest out an abundance of caution, two of the officials noted.