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The FBI is looking into over a dozen Uzbek nationals who entered the open U.S. southern border with the help of a smuggler tied to ISIS.
According to National Security Council spokesman Adrienne Watson, the government is investigating a number of the migrants as possible criminal threats after it learned they entered from Mexico with help from an ISIS sympathizer.
The national security implications are so dire that even CNN is admitting that Biden’s open border policies make the country “deeply vulnerable” to terrorist attacks.
“Though there is no evidence at this point to justify detaining anyone, the episode was so alarming that an urgent classified intelligence report was circulated to President Joe Biden’s top Cabinet officials in their morning briefing book,” CNN reported Tuesday.
“For some counterterrorism officials, it shows that the US is deeply vulnerable to the possibility that terrorists could sneak across the southern border by hiding amid the surge of migrants entering the country in search of asylum.”
“The incident kicked off a flurry of urgent meetings among top national security and administration officials at a time when Republicans have hammered Biden on the security of the southern border heading into the 2024 campaign. Staff on key congressional committees have been informed of the incident, according to two sources familiar with the matter.”
Earlier this year, a cohort of migrants from Uzbekistan requested asylum and were screened by the Department of Homeland Security, part of a rising number of asylum seekers who have traveled to the US from Central Asia in recent years. There was no information in any of the intelligence community’s databases that raised any red flags and the people were all released into the US pending a court date.
It was only later, when the FBI learned about the existence of a human smuggling network helping Uzbek nationals travel to the US – and that this network included at least one individual with connections to ISIS – that national security officials put the pieces together.
When pressed by Fox News reporter Steve Doocy on why such a national security breach could have been allowed to happen, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre couldn’t directly answer.
“How’s it possible that an ISIS sympathizer is sneaking people into this country?” he asked her.
Jean-Pierre replied, “The intelligence alerted us to a human smuggling network. We moved fast and successfully to, uh…to uh, successfully to disrupt it.”
"How's it possible that an ISIS sympathizer is sneaking people into this country?"
JEAN-PIERRE: "We moved fast and successfully to disrupt it"
"Are you saying you know where all of the people this ISIS sympathizer snuck into the country are?"
JEAN-PIERRE: Well… pic.twitter.com/blpY3XGBlp
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) August 29, 2023
Doocy followed up by asking if the White House was aware of the current whereabouts of the dozen or so Uzbek nationals.
“Are you saying you know where all of the people this ISIS sympathizer snuck into the country are?” he asked.
Jean-Pierre again dodged: “If I can answer the question, I’m sure I’ll touch on everything that you wanna ask me,” she snapped. “So again, intelligence alerted us of a human smuggling network. We believe and we moved fastly and we successfully disrupted it. So let’s be very clear about that. And we are very grateful to the law enforcement for their quick work and their vigilance on this.
“Now to your other part of the question. Smugglers have been detained overseas including one linked to the foreign terrorist organization [ISIS],” she admitted. “There is no sign that anyone moved by the smuggling network has terrorism connections, so I wanna be clear there as well.”
She also insisted that illegal aliens brought into the U.S. by smuggling networks are subject to “extra vetting” as a “precaution.”
In other words, she has no clue where these nationals are.
The Biden regime has made it extremely easy for smugglers and potential terrorists to funnel migrants into the U.S. in part due to welding the floodgates of the border wall permanently open.
“It was so easy to get into the US,” one woman said after walking through the open gates last week. “Nothing like our journey through Mexico. That part was hard. I thought there was going to be more security.”