Tajik migrants with suspected ISIS ties planned to attack LGBTQ space in Philadelphia: sources
The group of Tajik immigrants with alleged ties to ISIS had been planning an attack on an LGBTQ establishment in Philadelphia and seeking to target “infidels” before they were arrested in June, The Post has learned.
The eight Tajik terror suspects crossed the southern border, some using the Harris-Biden administration's CBP One phone app, and federal agents did not uncover any information suggesting terrorist ties, the sources said.
They were captured as part of a sting operation that spanned several states including New York, Philadelphia and Los Angeles; one of the suspects was caught on a wiretap talking about bombs, sources said earlier.
But it later emerged that the group had also planned the attack in the City of Brotherly Love, a congressional source told The Post, without elaborating. A source at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement also said the group had been discussing the possibility of targeting “infidels” in the United States.
It is unclear how the group planned to carry out the attack or its exact location.
Neither the Department of Homeland Security nor the FBI responded to The Post's requests for comment.
Months before the arrests, FBI Director Chris Wray warned of the possibility that ISIS could be exploiting an open southern border.
He had also expressed concern to lawmakers about the possibility of a “coordinated attack” taking place on U.S. soil following the ISIS-K attack on a concert hall in Moscow — carried out by Tajik nationals — that killed 145 people and injured hundreds more.
ISIS-K, which stands for Islamic State of Khorasan, a region in South Asia, is an offshoot of the Islamic State terrorist organization.
“Our most immediate concern has been that individuals or small groups might be distortedly inspired by events in the Middle East to carry out attacks here at home,” Wray told a House Appropriations subcommittee.
“But now, there is growing concern about the possibility of a coordinated attack here in the country, similar to the ISIS-K attack we saw at the concert hall in Russia a couple of weeks ago.”
Wray had also previously revealed to the Senate Intelligence Committee that a human smuggling operation with ties to terrorists from ISIS-affiliated groups was operating on the southern border.
“I want to be a little bit careful about how far I can go in an open session, but there is one network in particular, where some of the foreign facilitators of the smuggling network have ties to ISIS, that we are very concerned about and have been devoting a tremendous amount of effort with our partners to investigate,” the FBI director said in response to a question from Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.).
“Exactly what that network is doing is something that, again, is the subject of our current investigation,” he added.
The FBI was also investigating a smuggling ring in which a Turkish smuggler linked to ISIS helped dozens of migrants from Uzbekistan cross the US-Mexico border. CNN reported last August.
Border Patrol agents have caught a record number of migrants crossing the southern border illegally whose names appear on the terrorist watch list in recent years, with such encounters increasing from 11 in fiscal years 2017 through 2020 to 382 between fiscal years 2021 and August 2024, according to federal data.
As migrants crossed the southern border in record numbers under the Harris-Biden administration, federal authorities accidentally allowed several migrants with known or suspected ties to terrorism to slip through their fingers.
One of them was Mohammad Kharwin, 48, who illegally crossed the California border in March 2023 and was released into the United States before federal officials became aware of his alleged ties to terrorism.
It took nearly a year for the FBI to notify ICE that Kharwin was suspected of being a member of the U.S.-designated foreign terrorist group Hezb-e-Islami.
He was then arrested in February but released a second time by a judge who was unaware of the suspected terrorist's background before authorities acted and arrested him again.
Border agents also released a 27-year-old Somali national, who has not been identified by name, despite being a “confirmed member of al Shabaab,” a designated terrorist organization, ICE previously admitted.
The man, who is said to be “involved in the use, manufacture, or transportation of explosives or firearms,” was released after illegally crossing the border in California in March 2023.
ICE didn't catch him until almost a year later in Minnesota.
Border Patrol agents themselves have said they are releasing terrorists and criminals into the country because they do not have enough time or background information to effectively vet border crossers.
“What we’re seeing now is only going to get worse,” a Border Patrol agent previously told The Post.
