When federal agents eight people from Tajikistan were arrested and alleged ties to the Islamic State terrorist group for crimes dating back to June, US officials thought the planned attacks in Los Angeles, New York and Philadelphia would prove the fastest way to disrupt a potential terrorist plot in its early stages. Four months later, after being detained at Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities, three of the men have been returned to Tajikistan and Russia, US officials told CBS News, following the removal of immigration court judges.
Four other Tajiks — also in ICE custody — are awaiting removal on flights to Central Asia, and U.S. officials expect they will be returned in the next few weeks. Only one of those arrested is still awaiting trial, following a health issue, although US officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive measures, said he is still in custody and may face the same fate.
The men face no additional charges – including terrorism-related charges – for the decision to immediately detain them and remove them through deportation proceedings, rather than schedule a hard-fought terrorism trial in Article III courts, due to temporary concerns about. social Security.
Shortly after the eight foreigners crossed into the United States, the FBI learned of possible ties to the Islamic State, CBS News previously reported. The FBI identified a young terrorist plot, prompting their arrest, in part, by using wiretaps after people had already been vetted by US Customs and Border Protection, law enforcement sources confirmed to CBS News in June.
A few months later, their removal following immigration procedures marks the departure of post-9/11 intelligence sharing from US government buildings.
Now that it is faced with a diverse population of immigrants on the US-Mexico border, a new effort is underway by the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice and the Intelligence Community to normalize the direct sharing of classified information – including the most significant secret – with US immigration Judges.
The sharing of routine intelligence with immigration judges is intended to allow US immigration courts to routinely incorporate contempt information into their decisions. This effort led to the creation of secure and compassionate information environments – also known as SCIFs – to help facilitate the sharing of classified information. Considered as the last step of the department, Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has tried to use immigration tools, in recent months, to reduce and disrupt the threat activity.
The attack on immigrants, back in June, underscores a number of terrorism concerns for the US government this year, as security agencies point to a system that is now flashing red after the October 7 attack by Hamas in Israel, and the outbreak of terrorism is hot. Places to live in Central Asia.
The joint intelligence report was released this month, and was obtained by CBS Newswarns that foreign terrorist organizations have taken advantage of the attacks almost one year ago and their aftermath to try to recruit fanatical followers, creating media outlets comparing the attacks of October 7 and 9/11 and encouraging “lone attackers to use simple tactics such as guns, knives, Molotov cocktail, and vehicles attacking Western targets to avenge the deaths in Gaza.”
In May, ICE arrested an Uzbek man in Baltimore with alleged ties to ISIS after living in the US for more than two years, NBC News first reported.
Last year, Tajiks participated in failed terrorist plots in Russia, Iran and Turkey, as well as in Europe, and several Tajik men were arrested as a result. March attack on Crocus City Hall in Moscow which left at least 133 people dead and hundreds more injured.
This attack is linked to ISIS-K, or the Islamic State Khorasan Provincean offshoot of ISIS that emerged in 2015, founded by disaffected members of Pakistani militant groups, including Taliban fighters. In August 2021, during the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan, ISIS-K launched a suicide attack in Kabul, killing 13 US soldiers and at least 170 Afghan citizens.
In ICE’s latest policy change, the agency now also screens foreign nationals arriving from Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and other Central Asian countries, detaining them pending removal hearings or immigration hearings.
Only 0.007% of arrivals are marked on the FBI’s watch list, and an even smaller number of asylum seekers are eventually removed. But as migrants arrive at the Southwest border from conflict zones in the Eastern Hemisphere, posing potential links to dangerous or terrorist groups, the White House is now looking at ways to speed up the removal of asylum seekers who are considered a potential threat to American society.
“Encounters with immigrants from Eastern Hemisphere countries – such as China, India, Russia and West African countries – in FY 2024 decreased slightly from 10 percent to 9 percent of encounters, but it is still a higher number of encounters than before FY 2023,” According to -Homeland Threat Assessment, a public intelligence document released earlier this month.
A senior national security official told reporters at a briefing on Wednesday that the US is engaged in “ongoing efforts to try to make sure that we can use all the information available that the US government has classified and classified, and make sure that the best picture about the person who wants to enter the United States is available to the frontline staff.” who met that person.”
About 139 people flagged by the FBI’s terrorist watch list have been encountered at the US-Mexico border through July of the 2024 fiscal year. That number is down from 216 during the same period in 2023. CBP encountered 283 individuals on the US-Canada border watch list in July. for fiscal year 2024, down from the 375 we experienced during the same period in 2023.
“I think one of the reasons for the increase in immigration in recent years is that our border agents are encountering a very diverse population of people who are trying to enter the United States or who want to enter the United States,” the DHS chief said. said. “So, some time ago, it may have been primarily a Western Hemisphere phenomenon. Now, our border workers meet people from all over the world, from all parts of the world, to include conflict zones and other places where individuals may be. It connects or can support relationships and dangerous or terrorist organizations that we have long had concerns about.”
In April, FBI Director Christopher Wray warned that human smuggling operations at the southern border were smuggling people with possible links to terrorist groups.
“When I look back on my law enforcement career, it would be hard to think of a time when so many threats to public safety and national security were at their peak at the same time, but that’s the case as I sit here. today,” Wray told Congress in June, days before dozens of Tajik men were arrested.
The immediate return of the three Tajiks to Central Asia required extensive diplomatic coordination, which the State Department is doing, U.S. officials said.
Returning to Central Asia is often met with operational and diplomatic obstacles, although regular channels of removal exist. According to the agency’s data, in 2023, ICE deported only four immigrants from Tajikistan.
Margaret Brennan, Robert Legare and Camilo Montoya-Galvez contributed to this report.