Two weeks after a U.S. Tennessee representative sent out a warning about members of the terrorist group ISIS crossing the open southern border, news has emerged that an ISIS smuggling network has brought more than 400 illegal migrants into the country.
Three Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials told NBC News that “over 400 immigrants from Central Asia and elsewhere who crossed into the U.S. in the past three years as ‘subjects of concern’ because they were brought by an ISIS-affiliated human smuggling network.”
According to the report, only 150 of them have been arrested, and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is looking for the rest.
On June 12, House Committee on Homeland Security Chairman Representative Mark Green (R-TN) issued a warning about ISIS members crossing the border illegally.
“Almost weekly we are getting reports that someone with terrorist ties or other major criminal connections has been released into our country by the Biden administration and allowed to roam free for months or even years,” Green said. “Such bad actors exploiting our borders used to be the exception—it’s quickly becoming the rule under President Biden and now-impeached Secretary Mayorkas. It’s only a matter of time before one of these individuals connected to a terrorist group is involved in something devastating on U.S. soil, and this administration will be responsible. How much longer will we let this madness continue?”
On Wednesday, Green issued another statement in response to the NBC News report:
“In President Biden and Secretary Mayorkas’ America, border security and immigration enforcement have become a punchline. There’s literally no one President Biden won’t turn away—including illegal aliens from problematic countries smuggled in by networks connected to ISIS. Every alarm is flashing red, and my committee has long warned that this administration’s open-borders agenda is bringing bad actors into the homeland in droves. DHS has now admitted yet again that this is true. This is unacceptable, preventable, and absolutely terrifying. True leaders would have accepted responsibility, adjusted their policies, and stepped aside for those who will enforce the laws they swore to uphold. Chuck Schumer and Senate Democrats also own this catastrophe—they had the chance to remove Secretary Mayorkas, yet broke with centuries of precedent and refused to even hold an impeachment trial. The Biden administration and its congressional enablers have failed the American people.”
The NBC News report, citing DHS officials, said those officials were not particularly worried about an ISIS terror attack.
However, Christoper Wray, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), said the opposite in testimony before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence during an annual Worldwide Threats Assessment hearing this March.
Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) questioned Wray about threats posed by ISIS.
“There are smuggling networks all over the world that specialize in moving people from all over the world, including from the Middle East, Central Asia, and so forth,” Rubio said. “Are we aware that any of these smuggling organizations are run or conducted by people that have ties, for example, to ISIS or other terrorist organizations?”
“I want to be a little bit careful about how far I can go in an open session,” Wray replied. “But there is a particular network where some of the overseas facilitators of the smuggling network have ISIS ties that we’re very concerned about, and that we’ve been spending an enormous amount of effort with our partners to investigate. Exactly what that network is up to is something that is, again, the subject of our current investigation.”
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Pete D’Abrosca is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Pete on X/Twitter.
Photo “Illegal Immigrants” by Chief Patrol Agent Gloria I. Chavez.
