Islamic State terrorists who crossed open Southern border highlight U.S. vulnerability to jihad attack

If only someone had been warning authorities over the last 20+ years that something like this could happen.

‘ISIS isn’t done with us’: Arrested Tajiks highlight US fears of terror attack on US

by Katie Bo Lillis and Josh Campbell, CNN, June 14, 2024:

The recent arrest of eight Tajik nationals believed to have connections to ISIS has heightened concerns among national security officials that a dangerous affiliate of the now-splintered terror group could potentially carry out an attack on US soil, according to multiple US officials who spoke to CNN.

Members of the group initially entered the US at the southern border and requested asylum under US immigration law. It’s unclear whether they entered at the same time and place.

By the time intelligence collected on overseas ISIS targets connected the men to the terror group, they had already been vetted by immigration authorities and allowed into the country, officials said.

Though there is no hard evidence indicating they were sent to the US as part of a terror plot, at least some of the Tajik nationals had expressed extremist rhetoric in their communications, either on social media or in direct private communications that US intelligence was able to monitor, three officials said….

Of particular concern to US officials was that the men hail from Tajikistan, a corner of Central Asia that in recent years has been a source of steady recruitment by ISIS-K, the Afghanistan-based affiliate of the Islamic terrorist group. ISIS-K is led primarily by Tajiks, who have carried out a series of recent attacks in Europe on behalf of the group, including the Crocus Hall attack in Moscow in March that killed more than 100 people.

National security officials fear that at least some of the eight Tajiks were ripe for radicalization by ISIS-K while they were inside the United States, potentially struggling with isolation, financial stress or discrimination — all things that could make a person susceptible to ISIS propaganda glorifying violence….

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