Homeland Security: there is an ISIS-linked smuggling network using U.S. southern border
New report shows Biden admin not properly vetting border crossers
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) told NBC News that it has identified over 400 migrants who were brought to the U.S. by an ISIS-affiliated human smuggling network.
Of the 400, 150 have been arrested and deported, but the whereabouts of 50 of these individuals remain unknown. Federal authorities are currently searching for them.
“The fact that the whereabouts were unknown is clearly alarming,” former FBI counterterrorism section chief Christopher O’Leary, who now works at security consulting firm The Soufan Group, told NBC News.
It is believed most of these individuals illegally crossed the U.S. southern border and were released into the nation's interior by Customs and Border Patrol because there was no information on them suggesting they had ties to terrorism at the time they were encountered by border officials.
According to NBC News, "Two officials said federal law enforcement agencies are “not panicking” about those people now identified as “subjects of concern,” but are prioritizing them for arrest on immigration charges out of an abundance of caution."
The news follows arrests of six suspected terrorists with ties to ISIS as part of a sting operation conducted in New York, Los Angeles and Philadelphia earlier this month. That number has now risen to 8 as of June 26.
Those arrests are in addition to the arrest in April in Maryland of a man from Uzbekistan with suspected ties to ISIS.
How are these people getting into the country? Lack of vetting is part of it.
The Office of Inspector General for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security issued a report on June 25 that says the Biden administration admitted at least 7.1 million illegal aliens into the U.S. interior without proper screening.
This lapse in basic screening was achieved by Biden expanding a COVID-era policy waiving the requirements for consular interviews and collection fingerprints of illegal aliens. The fingerprint waiver only ended in December 2023.
The report also says CBP Officers received limited information on whether non-immigrant visa holders had been interviewed.
But it’s no longer just our southern border seeing a surge of illegal migrants, this activity is now happening along the U.S. border with Canada.
According to the Swanton Section border officials overseeing the areas of Vermont, New Hampshire, and New York, their Agents have apprehended 12,000 people “from 85 countries since October 2023.”
More To The Story
A disturbing June 25th border headline from FOX News:
Border Patrol Chief Jason Owens announced that agents had stopped seven previously convicted sex offenders at the border.
He said the crimes include rape, aggravated sexual abuse and assault and criminal unlawful contact with a minor.
"These are the individuals attempting to evade capture," he said.
But there was more.
Separately, agents in the Tucson Sector in Arizona announced the arrest of an additional two felons over the weekend. The two Mexican nationals have convictions for aggravated sexual assault, aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, and aggravated abuse of a minor.
It's also been learned that Franklin Jose Pena Ramos, one of the two illegal aliens who raped and murdered 12-year-old Jocelyn Nungaray in Houston was wearing an ankle monitor at the time of the crime.
The prosecutors had asked for $5 million bail to be set. The judge in the case had other ideas and set bail at $10 million, calling Ramos an "astronomical" flight risk and the odds he'd come back to court to face the charges was "near zero."
Ramos is 26 and Martinez is 21.
Let this line from the FOX News article sink in:
"In this case the defendant lured a 12-year-old under a bridge, where he and his co-defendant remained with her for over 2 hours, took her pants off, tied her up, and killed her, then threw her body into the bayou," Harris County Assistant District Attorney Michael Abner wrote.
In the city I grew up in, a woman was murdered on her 21st birthday by an illegal alien. Via Syracuse.com:
A 21-year-old man from Ecuador suffocated a woman on her 21st birthday and then hid her body in a Syracuse park, prosecutors said.
The man buried the woman in a shallow grave about 15 feet back from trees in Lincoln Park on the city’s North Side, according to prosecutor Alphonse Williams. The man was staying in an Airbnb diagonally across the street from the park, he said.
The man, Jhon Moises Chacaguasay-Ilbis, was charged with second-degree murder and concealment of a human corpse, according to records from the Onondaga County Justice Center jail. He was booked in the jail Wednesday afternoon.
Chacaguasay-Ilbis had travelled to Central New York last week to meet the woman, Joselyn Jhoana Toaquiza, for her birthday on Tuesday, June 18, Williams told syracuse.com | The Post-Standard. People have told prosecutors that the two had gone to primary school together in their home country of Ecuador, Williams said.
[...]
Chacaguasay-Ilbis travelled to the United States last year and surrendered himself at the border, Williams said. He was released, Williams said, and may be applying for asylum.
Just in the past few days, Bernardo Mendoza Argueta, a 37-year-old El Salvadoran national who illegally in the country, was booked into a jail in Irving, Texas after murdering two workers at an area Chick-Fil-A. The Irving police department confirmed there is an “ICE hold" on him, per the NY Post.
Also this past week, 21-year-old Sakir Akkan, a Turkish illegal alien, was charged with raping a 15-year-old girl in his car in NY after threatening to beat her with a pipe. The crime occurred on May 14 but he was not caught until June 18.
According to the Albany Times-Union, Border Patrol agents arrested Akkan in November 2023 at the U.S.-Mexico border in California and released him into the U.S. interior. Akkan was then able to get a New Jersey driver's license, a car and found a place to live in Troy, New York.
In North Carolina, Julio Monquel-Sandria was arrested for beating a former co-worker with an extension cord and then holding another worker at gun point to beat to additional employees.
According to CBS 17, Monquel-Sandria was arrested by the Asheboro Police Department on three counts of false imprisonment, three counts of communicating threats, and three counts of assault, inflicting serious injury in connection with the incident. He was also charged with possession of methamphetamine and a number of outstanding arrest warrants.
Monquel-Sandria was taken to the Randolph County Detention Facility after being issued only an $11,000 secured bond.
Additionally, Monquel-Sandria had been using an alias of Juan Antonio-Frias and deputies also said he has “been deported several times and has an extensive criminal history.”
Monquel-Sandria isn’t the only such arrest in North Carolina.
On March 11, the Gates County Sheriff’s Office arrested Awet Hagos, a man allegedly on the terror watchlist. Hagos was arrested following a four-hour standoff with police.
NC Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson shot off a letter to the Biden administration asking for confirmation that Hagos is on the terror watch list.
Robinson also asked if the Biden administration knew Hagos was in the country, if federal officials have determined how he got into the country and if Hagos has known associates who may also be in the country. Additionally, Robinson asked Biden if the federal government is aware of any other potential terrorist suspects in North Carolina and whether they have ties to Hagos.
Robinson’s letter was also signed by Senate Leader Phil Berger (R-Eden), House Speaker Tim Moore (R-Kings Mountain) and Gates County Sheriff Ray Campbell.