Immigration Customs Enforcement Agents - Photo by Center for Immigration Studies
NEW YORK, NY (WSAU) – The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency announced that eight Tajikistan nationals with ties to the terrorist organization ISIS were arrested on Tuesday morning following a sting operation.
According to the New York Post, which spoke exclusively with two ICE sources familiar with the operation, agents made the arrests in New York City, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia after the FBI alerted the agency over the group’s alleged plans to carry out bombing attacks in the U.S., which were overheard by agents while listening to conversations over wiretap.
“Remember the Boston Marathon [bombing]? I’m afraid something like that might happen again or worse,” a source with knowledge of the conversations told The Post while also confirming that the main subject of the investigation was released into the U.S. from the southern border by federal agents with a scheduled court date in 2025.
These arrests come only two months after FBI director Christopher Wray warned lawmakers and federal agencies over concerns of a “coordinated attack” on U.S. soil after a group of Tajikistan nationals successfully attacked a concert hall in Moscow, Russia, which killed 145 people, saying, “Increasingly concerning is the potential for a coordinated attack here in the homeland, akin to the ISIS-K attack we saw at the Russia concert hall a couple of weeks ago.”
According to a CNN report from August of last year, the FBI began looking into these types of threats after dozens of Uzbek migrants crossed the US southern border with the assistance of a Turkish smuggler connected to ISIS.
Representatives for both ICE and the FBI weren’t available to provide The Post with a comment following the arrests.
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