When eight Tajik males sought asylum on the southwestern U.S. border months in the past, federal authorities had no cause to doubt that they have been determined migrants fleeing a poor nation in war-torn Central Asia.
However quickly after they have been admitted into the nation, the F.B.I. realized they may have ties to the Islamic State and opened a counterterrorism investigation.
This was no strange inquiry. Dozens of personnel monitored the lads intently as they made their strategy to completely different cities throughout america, officers mentioned. The White Home was up to date commonly.
The bureau hoped to collect details about a broader terrorist community. However heightened considerations a few potential assault in at the very least one location triggered the arrest of all eight males earlier this month on immigration expenses, in response to a number of U.S. officers talking on the situation of anonymity to debate the delicate investigation. Up to now, the lads haven’t been charged with any terrorism-related offenses.
The dramatic episode unfolded as nervousness has risen amongst U.S. officers, who’ve been warning for months that the battle in Gaza and unrest in Central Asia may spill into america, most definitely within the type of small radicalized teams appearing on their very own initiative or lone-wolf terrorists.
The brand new particulars concerning the F.B.I. investigation and the choice to arrest the lads underscore the deluge of terrorism threats inundating nationwide safety businesses, some emanating from well-known worldwide actors, others from rising sizzling spots like Tajikistan.
Because the Hamas assaults in Israel on Oct. 7, the F.B.I. has acquired “greater than 1,800 stories of threats or different sorts of suggestions or leads which can be someway associated to or have a nexus to the present battle in Israel and Gaza,” Lisa Monaco, the deputy legal professional normal, mentioned in a tv interview in December. She added that lots of the circumstances have been resolved with out incident.
Nationwide safety officers are deeply involved concerning the tempo of the threats.
“Wanting again over my profession in legislation enforcement, I’d be laborious pressed to think about a time when so many alternative threats to our public security and nationwide safety have been so elevated suddenly, however that’s the case as I sit right here right this moment,” the F.B.I. director, Christopher A. Wray, informed Congress this month, simply days earlier than the lads have been arrested.
An F.B.I. spokeswoman declined to remark.
For years, Republicans and conservative media shops have described the potential risks posed by terrorists who would possibly slip into the nation on the southwestern border together with tens of 1000’s of Latin American migrants. These fears, for probably the most half, haven’t been realized.
It’s nonetheless unclear if the lads have been, the truth is, planning a terrorist assault — whether or not directed by the Islamic State or impressed by the extremist group. However the sources the F.B.I. dedicated to the case underscore how severely the bureau continues to view the risk as a prime precedence.
The arrests come at a second of most political consideration to frame safety. The problem has emerged as a serious supply of rivalry between President Biden and former President Donald J. Trump, who ceaselessly talks about “migrant crime.”
Nonetheless, Consultant Jim Himes, Democrat of Connecticut and the rating member of the Home Intelligence Committee, urged that the incident be put in context. He cautioned that the “variety of deadly terrorist assaults undertaken by undocumented migrants who crossed our southern border is zero” and that the “variety of Individuals injured by foreign-born terrorists who entered the nation illegally is zero.”
Tajik adherents of the Islamic State — particularly inside an affiliate often called ISIS-Ok — have taken more and more high-profile roles in a number of latest terrorist assaults. Over the previous 12 months alone, Tajiks have been concerned in assaults in Russia, Iran and Turkey, in addition to foiled plots in Europe.
ISIS-Ok, or the Islamic State Khorasan Province, was based in Afghanistan in 2015 by disaffected members of the Pakistani Taliban, who then embraced a extra violent model of Islam. The group noticed its ranks reduce roughly in half, to about 1,500 to 2,000 fighters, by 2021 from a mixture of American airstrikes and Afghan commando raids that killed lots of its leaders.
The group obtained a second wind quickly after the Taliban toppled the Afghan authorities that 12 months. In the course of the U.S. army withdrawal from the nation in August 2021, ISIS-Ok carried out a suicide bombing on the worldwide airport in Kabul that killed 13 U.S. troops and as many as 170 civilians.
ISIS-Ok has since revived a few of its world ambitions, with Tajiks constituting greater than half of its a number of thousand troopers, consultants mentioned.
Russia is a frequent goal, however ISIS-Ok has additionally vowed to assault Individuals and america.
Many of the particulars surrounding the F.B.I.’s investigation stay secret, however interviews with a number of U.S. officers conversant in the case have supplied further insights.
The officers mentioned the lads entered america by way of the border in Southern California and Texas starting in 2023. They’re all ethnic Tajiks, however at the very least one had a Russian passport. A number of the males might need identified each other.
They made their strategy to Los Angeles, Philadelphia and New York, the place there are giant Central Asian populations. As soon as the F.B.I. decided that the lads might need a connection to the Islamic State or sympathize with the group, the bureau managed to determine their whereabouts.
That set off a sprawling investigation that was paying homage to the bureau’s efforts after Sept. 11 to trace a number of terrorism suspects in thwarted assaults, akin to a plot towards the New York subways in 2009. In earlier high-priority terrorism investigations, the F.B.I. has relied on aerial surveillance and a essential warrantless surveillance program often called Part 702 to collect intelligence.
This system authorizes the federal government to gather the communications of foreigners overseas who’ve been focused for intelligence functions, together with when these individuals are interacting with Individuals.
The stakes have been extraordinarily excessive for the F.B.I. and Mr. Wray. If any of the lads had slipped away and carried out a terrorist assault, the bureau would have been blamed for not apprehending them earlier and confronted extra withering Republican criticism. But there’s at all times a trade-off. Arrests make it more durable to collect details about a potential community.
Within the case of the Tajiks, officers mentioned, it’s nonetheless not identified what the lads have been doing, whether or not they have been being directed by a terrorist group outdoors america or had been impressed to hold out an assault on their very own.
Regardless of the F.B.I. ultimately realized concerning the males’s actions prompted bureau counterterrorism officers to take them off the road and have them arrested on immigration expenses. Brokers with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the F.B.I. picked up the lads, who haven’t been named, over the weekend of June 8 in New York, Los Angeles and Philadelphia.
Federal authorities haven’t disclosed publicly what led investigators to imagine the lads may be concerned in terrorism. On the time, legislation enforcement officers mentioned solely that the lads have been arrested after unspecified “derogatory info” about them was found.
In a separate case, legal professionals representing a gaggle of nationals from Uzbekistan sued the U.S. authorities in federal court docket in February, claiming that migrants from that Central Asian nation had been focused for detention on the southern border.
If the Tajiks are held solely on immigration expenses and never different federal crimes they may virtually actually be deported, officers mentioned.
In his testimony to Congress earlier than the arrests, Mr. Wray hinted on the risk even because the F.B.I. quietly watched the suspects.
“However, now, more and more regarding is the potential for a coordinated assault right here within the homeland, akin to the ISIS-Ok assault we noticed on the Russia live performance corridor in March,” Mr. Wray mentioned.
Greater than 130 individuals have been killed in that assault close to Moscow, and several other of the suspects who’ve been arrested are Tajik.
Julian E. Barnes and Glenn Thrush contributed reporting.