WASHINGTON – Eight people from Tajikistan with suspected links to Islamic State have been arrested in the United States in recent days, according to several people familiar with the matter.
The arrests took place in New York, Philadelphia and Los Angeles and the individuals, who entered the U.S. through the southern border, are being held on immigration violations, said the people, who were not authorized to discuss the ongoing investigation by name and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
The nature of their suspected links to the Islamic State was not immediately clear, but the individuals were being tracked by the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, or JTTF. They were in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which made the arrests while working with the JTTF, pending the process to remove them from the country.
The individuals from Tajikistan entered the country last spring and went through the U.S. government’s screening process without finding information identifying them as potential terrorism-related concerns, one of the people familiar with the matter said.
The FBI and Department of Homeland Security issued a statement confirming the immigration-related arrests of “several noncitizens” but did not provide details. The agencies noted that the US has been in a “heightened threat environment”.
FBI Director Christopher Wray said the U.S. is facing increasing threats from domestic violent extremists as well as foreign terrorist organizations, especially after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel.
He told a recent congressional hearing that officials were “concerned about the terrorism implications of potential attacks on border vulnerabilities.” The Biden administration in August said it detected and thwarted a network attempting to smuggle people from Uzbekistan to the U.S. and that at least one member of the network had ties to a foreign terrorist group.
“The FBI and DHS will continue to work around the clock with our partners to identify, investigate and disrupt potential threats to national security,” the agencies said.
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