Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio is sounding the alarm on ISIS terrorists getting into the United States via the Southern border.
The senator, who is one of the final seven candidates to be former President Donald Trump’s vice presidential pick, detailed the threat in a piece for Fox News.
“In February 2022, Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) apprehended an illegal Uzbek immigrant named Jovokhir Attoev. Following Biden’s protocols, CBP then released Attoev — a single, military-aged male who had traveled thousands of miles through multiple countries — into the country,” he said, commenting on one known incident.
“Last May, however, the Uzbek government published a global notice that Attoev was wanted for ties to ISIS-K. The Biden administration only tracked him down last month, which means he flew under the radar inside the United States for two years,” he said.
And that was not the only case the senator highlighted.
“Per the press, illegal Afghan immigrant Mohammad Kharwin was suspected to be on the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) terror watch list for being a member of Hezb-e-Islami, a terrorist organization that has killed American service members,” the senator said of another incident.
“But when Kharwin crossed the border illegally in March 2023, officials couldn’t verify his identity, so once again, they let a single, military-aged male who had traveled thousands of miles through multiple countries, roam the homeland freely. It took 13 months for law enforcement to confirm his presence on the FBI’s watch list and arrest him,” he said.
In March, the senator grilled FBI Director Christopher Wray, who admitted that dangerous threats are coming from the border.
“There are smuggling networks all over the world that specialize in moving people from all over the world, including from the Middle East, Central Asia, and so forth. Are we aware that any of these smuggling organizations are run or conducted by people that have ties, for example, to ISIS or other terrorist organizations?” the senator said to the FBI director.
“I want to be a little bit careful about how far I can go in an open session. But there is a particular network where some of the overseas facilitators of the smuggling network have ISIS ties that we’re very concerned about, and that we’ve been spending an enormous amount of effort with our partners to investigate. Exactly what that network is up to is something that is, again, the subject of our current investigation,” the FBI director said.
“There is a network we’re concerned about that has facilitators involved in it that have ties to ISIS and other terrorist organizations?” the senator said to the FBI director to confirm what he heard, to which the director responded, “Correct.”
