U.S. authorities have virtually sealed any illuminating information about the recent FBI counterterrorism arrest of eight ISIS-tied Tajikistani nationals who crossed the southwest border a year ago. They were quickly freed amid the ongoing mass migration flood and claimed asylum. Federal law enforcement acted after a wiretap investigation intercepted communications that detected links to the Tajik-led ISIS-K terrorist group in Afghanistan and chatter about bombs and violent religious ideology. Though we are short of further details about the ISIS links and jihad talk, the initial arrests on immigration charges of border-crossing Tajik immigrants who were quickly freed at the border and got rolled up in a major counterterrorism dragnet constitute a momentous wake-up call that portends public policy consequences.
The multi-agency, FBI-led wiretap terrorism sting, just three months after four Tajik border infiltrators with the ISIS-K conducted a bloody, high body-count attack in Moscow that killed 145, comes too close to consummating an often-verbalized (and just as often ridiculed) fear of U.S.-Mexico border infiltration. That event and several others, including accidental terror suspect releases from the border and a thwarted box truck attack at Quantico Marine Corps Base in May by a Jordanian border-crosser, should demand a resolute U.S. homeland security enterprise pivot to mass border migration as a national security matter, a whole new public safety frontier.
But despite the public interest necessity of understanding and countering the terror travel tactic, mum has been the only official government word about the “Tajik 8” case since it came to light in early June through anonymously sourced leaks to reporters at the conservative-leaning New York Post and Fox News. Nor has the Tajik 8 case resonated much as a point of public debate, media punditry, or think tank analysis. CBS, NBC, CNN, and other outlets have confirmed the initial reports, which are not disputed by the government, but they seem to have little interest in the deeper implications of the story.
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