
(HorizonPost.com) – The chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence once again called on the Biden administration to declassify the information about the terror threats the FBI is monitoring so the public is aware of what they are.
Chairman Mike Turner appeared on CBS News’s “Face the Nation” with anchor Margaret Brennan on Sunday where he discussed possible terrorist threats on the US homeland in light of the eight men from Tajikistan with suspected ties to the Islamic State who were arrested last weekend in New York, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials confirmed that the eight men previously entered the United States at the US/Mexico border and underwent background checks before being cleared by Border Patrol and released into the US.
According to officials, the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, aware of a possible threat from terrorist groups in central Europe, began monitoring the men for several months.
The Joint Terrorism Task Force notified ICE about the men. ICE arrested the men on immigration charges. Additional terrorism-related charges could also be filed.
While Chairman Turner was not able to confirm the details surrounding the arrests, he told Margaret Brennan that given FBI Director Christopher Wray’s public statements, it was clear that the US is “at the highest level of a possible terrorist threat.” He added that the Biden administration’s immigration policies were posing a direct threat to the American people by “allowing people to cross the border unvetted.”
Turner said the administration must declassify the information on the terrorist threats the FBI is seeing so there could be public discussions about what those risks and threats might be.
Turner added that what the country has been seeing was “notable and expected” given the administration’s open border policies. He said the Intelligence Committee has been open with the American public about the threats and has been “pointing the finger directly at the administration’s policies.”
At least two of the Tajik suspects crossed the US southern border last year, according to US officials.
Earlier this spring, ICE arrested an Uzbek national who had been living in the US since February 2022. In March 2024, a review of his asylum application uncovered a May 2023 notice from Uzbekistan warning that the man had links to the Islamic State.
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