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Migrants from terror-linked Tajikistan have been showing up at the southern U.S. border left and right, according to reports.

Indeed, the number of illegal aliens from Tajikistan that have arrived at the border has “skyrocketed” ever since President Joe Biden, a rabid Democrat, assumed office in early 2021, according to the New York Post.

This is a major problem because Tajikistan  is “a hotbed of ISIS recruitment.” Yet over 1,500 Tajiks made it across the border between October of 2020 and May of 2024 — 500 this year alone.

Now contrast this with past data: “Over the previous 14 years there were just 26 Tajik nationals crossing the border,” the Post notes.

What’s not clear is how many of the Tajiks who made it across the border were subsequently released into the U.S. interior, but it’s known that most aliens claim asylum and then wait for a hearing.

Dovetailing back to Tajikistan, it borders Afghanistan and has become a hotbed of Islamic terror from both ISIS and the Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISIS-K), an extreme offshoot.

Javed Ali, a former counterterrorism official who reportedly now teaches at the University of Michigan, told the Post that the influx of Tajik nationals could possibly be part of an ISIS operation “seeding people into the United States” in preparation for an attack.

In fact, it was only a week or so ago that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) conducted a multi-city sting that rounded up eight Tajik nationals with direct ties to ISIS.

The operation reportedly included the wiretapping of an individual who was allegedly discussing bombs.

“Over the last few days, ICE agents arrested several non-citizens pursuant to immigration authorities,” a joint FBI/ICE statement reads. The actions were carried out in close coordination with the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Forces.

“The individuals arrested are detained in ICE custody pending removal proceedings … The FBI and DHS will continue working around the clock with our partners to identify, investigate, and disrupt potential threats to national security,” it continues.

The threat from ISIS-K is particularly stark. It’s the same terrorist group that killed 145 people during a terror attack on a concert hall in Moscow a couple of months back in March.

Making matters worse, experts who spoke with the Post said ISIS and its affiliates are purposefully trying to use Tajiks to execute terror attacks abroad.

“Tajiks have been recruited to and played a key role in terrorist organizations like Islamic State to a greater degree than many neighboring countries in recent years,” Texas A&M University professor Edward Lemon told the Post.

“They have become key to [ISIS-K]’s externally-focused campaign as it seeks to gain attention and more recruits. Heavy-handed counter-extremism policies [by the Tajikistan government may be] causing the very terrorism they seek to address,” he added.

Lemon continued by warning that many Tajiks live outside of Tajikistan and rely on “networks of traffickers” to illegally gain entry into the U.S.

“Tajikistan is one of the most migration-dependent countries in the world, with over a million of the country’s 10 million people living in Russia,” he said. “As life in Russia has become more difficult since the invasion of Ukraine, they have sought other destinations such as Europe, the Gulf, and the US. Most come here, like so many others, to seek a better life.”

All this comes days after the Biden administration “sanctioned four people based in Central Asia and Turkey who are allegedly involved in an ISIS-tied smuggling operation helping migrants reach the US,” according to the Post.

“One of the sanctioned men is commander of the ISIS-Georgia Province, Adam Khamirzaev, who ‘provided guidance to this network on a range of activities supporting ISIS and was aware of its efforts to facilitate travelers to the United States,’” the Post notes.

Meanwhile, ISIS is working expeditiously to dramatically expand its recruitment drive.

“One of the things that they’ve actively and deliberately done is try to expand their recruits geographically,” Colin Clarke, the director of research at The Soufan Group, told the Post. “So not only Afghans and Pakistanis, but they want to bring in a big central Asian component.”

“Moreover, they want to reach out to the diaspora, so central Asians living in Europe, living in North America, in the attempt to radicalize them, because for ISIS K, it’s low hanging fruit,” he added.

Feature photo: Photo by Christian Torres/Anadolu via Getty Images

Vivek Saxena
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