8 people with suspected links to ISIS arrested, including in Philadelphia

Eight foreign nationals suspected of having ties to ISIS were arrested in recent days in a series of coordinated raids in Philadelphia, New York and Los Angeles, authorities said.

But officials remained tight-lipped Tuesday about the identities of the people and the circumstances that brought them to the attention of investigators.

A law enforcement source familiar with the matter said all of the individuals were originally from Tajikistan in Central Asia and entered the United States illegally via the southern border in 2023. They were allowed to remain in the country temporarily, pending their application. asylum, after preliminary results. the checks revealed no national security concerns.

However, subsequent reports indicated that each of those arrested may have some affiliation with the terrorist organization, said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity to protect ongoing investigations.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the FBI would not say how many people were arrested in Philadelphia or where or when those arrests took place.

So far, those arrested in the investigation, which was first reported Tuesday by the New York Post, have not been charged with terrorism-related crimes but are instead being held for rule violations immigration, authorities said.

“The arrested individuals are in ICE custody pending removal proceedings,” the agencies said in a joint statement.

For months, counterterrorism officials have grown increasingly concerned about the rise of an ISIS branch based in Central Asia and the potential vulnerability of the United States to terrorists stealthily crossing the US-Mexico border.

In March, FBI Director Christopher Wray warned the Senate Intelligence Committee about recent indications that a human smuggling operation with ties to terrorist-affiliated organizations had helped migrants enter illegally in the country.

“There is a particular network in which some of the foreign facilitators of the smuggling network have links to ISIS, which is of great concern to us and we have made enormous efforts with our partners to investigate,” he said . “Exactly what this network is doing is something that, again, is the subject of our current investigation.”

CNN reported last year that more than a dozen migrants from Uzbekistan and other Central Asian countries crossed the southern border illegally in early 2023 with the help of a Turkish smuggler linked to Islamic State, triggering an FBI investigation to track them down and determine if any of them had ties to terrorism.

It was unclear whether the eight migrants from Tajikistan arrested in recent raids in Philadelphia, New York and Los Angeles were connected to the same network.

However, NBC News reported Tuesday that the information that led to their arrest stemmed from the same investigation that resulted in the March arrest of a 33-year-old Uzbek man living in Baltimore on suspicion of having ties to the EI. His arrest came more than two years after he entered the country illegally and was allowed to remain in the United States with a pending asylum case.

Meanwhile, counterterrorism officials continue to warn that despite its defeat by a global coalition and the end of its caliphate in Syria and Iraq in 2019, ISIS remains a threat to national security the United States.

A branch of ISIS, the Islamic State of Khorasan (ISIS-K), has established a foothold in Central Asia and, according to an April New York Times report, recruits more than half of its recruits in Tajikistan.

The organization's Tajik loyalists have played a leading role in several recent terrorist attacks, including a March attack on a concert hall in Moscow that left 145 people dead.