Tajik natives with suspected ties to ISIS were arrested in a coordinated sting operation in New York, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles, the New York Post reported, citing ICE sources.
A total of eight from Tajikistan with suspected ties to the Islamic State group have been arrested in the United States in recent days, according to multiple people familiar with the matter.
One was heard on tape talking about bombs, sources told the Post.
"Remember the Boston marathon [bombing]? I'm afraid something like that might happen again or worse," one of the sources said to The Post.
One of those arrested had been released by federal authorities at the southern border last year, the Post reported, citing sources.
The nature of their suspected connections to ISIS 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 proceedings to remove them from the country.
The individuals from Tajikistan entered the country last spring and passed through the U.S. government's screening process without turning up information that would have identified them as potential terrorism-related concerns, said one of the people familiar with the matter.
The FBI and Department of Homeland Security issued a statement confirming the immigration-related arrests of "several non-citizens" but did not detail specifics. The agencies noted that the U.S. has been in a "heightened threat environment."
FBI Director Christopher Wray has said the U.S. is facing accelerating threats from homegrown violent extremists as well as foreign terrorist organizations, particularly in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas on Israel.
He said at one recent congressional hearing that officials were "concerned about the terrorism implications from potential targeting of vulnerabilities at the border." The Biden administration in August said that it had detected and stopped a network attempting to smuggle people from Uzbekistan into the U.S. and that at least one member of the network had links to a foreign terrorist group.
"The FBI and DHS will continue working around the clock with our partners to identify, investigate, and disrupt potential threats to national security," the agencies said.
CNN reported in August that the FBI is investigating if migrants from Uzbekistan crossed over the southern border with a Turkish smuggler.
From 2021 to 2024, 362 migrants with terror ties were apprehended at the southern border, according to federal data.
In 2023, Mohammad Kharwin illegally entered the U.S. from the southern border and was freed for a year, before the FBI notified ICE he was a member of Hezb-e-Islami, the Post reported. He was rearrested in April.
A 27-year-old Somali national and member of al Shabaab was let into the country before being rearrested a year later, ICE said.
"What you're seeing now is only gonna get worse," a Border Patrol agent told the Post. "ICE probably has a list of people they need to go after."
Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.
Sam Barron ✉
Sam Barron has almost two decades of experience covering a wide range of topics including politics, crime and business.
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