Immigration and Customs Enforcement recently arrested an Uzbek man in Baltimore with alleged ties to ISIS after living in the United States for more than two years, according to two U.S. officials.
Officials said 33-year-old Jovokhir Attoyev crossed the border into Arizona and was apprehended by the Border Patrol in February 2022. At that time, neither Customs and Border Protection nor ICE could find any incriminating information about Attoyev. He was released on bail in the United States.
Later, in May 2023, Uzbekistan issued an international notice that Attoyev was wanted in its country for alleged links to ISIS.
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But it wasn’t until March 2024, nearly a year later, when the U.S. government was reviewing Attoyev’s asylum application that officials discovered a notice from Uzbekistan and linked it to the man in Maryland.
After the connection was made, ICE arrested him on April 17 in Baltimore. According to the ICE website, Attoyev is in custody in Pennsylvania. He is awaiting arraignment next week in immigration court in New Jersey, where ICE lawyers will likely argue that they should hold him in custody to learn more about his potential ties to ISIS.
Several former Department of Homeland Security officials interviewed by NBC News said the case raises concerns about how quickly and often the U.S. can monitor migrants who have already crossed the border.
Although there was no incriminating information about Attoyev when he crossed the border in 2022, the Uzbek government’s notification in 2023 was not initially checked against the list of immigrants living in the United States and awaiting court hearings.
Elizabeth Neumann, who served as assistant secretary for counterterrorism and threat prevention at DHS from 2017 to 2020, said Congress should pass bipartisan border security legislation blocked by Republicans earlier this year and allocate more money to fight terrorism.
“My concern is that our counterterrorism budget has been cut dramatically over the last decade,” Neumann said. “And that means we have [fewer] this is done by analysts. So it’s harder to actually get things done on time when you have it [fewer] resources.”
He added that anti-terrorist budgets have decreased since ISIS destroyed its caliphate in the Middle East. But since then, especially with the overthrow of the Afghan government in 2021, ISIS has re-emerged as a threat. The Islamic State of Khorasan (ISIS-K), a branch of ISIS, claimed responsibility for the armed attack in Moscow in March.
In February, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines told a Senate hearing that ISIS “remains a significant counterterrorism concern for us.”
According to senior researcher Colin Clarke, there is no indication that ISIS is able to establish a covert network inside the United States, and militants who manage to cross the US border will have a hard time launching an attack without such a network. The Soufan Center, a non-profit center focusing on global security issues.
Multiple law enforcement agencies told NBC News that the U.S. has not definitively determined whether Attoyev is part of ISIS or whether he ever carried out or planned an attack. DHS continues to seek information and is questioning him further while he is in custody, officials said.
A DHS spokesperson said in a statement: “DHS screens and vets individuals seeking to enter the United States to determine threats to national security or public safety and takes appropriate action to prevent an individual from entering the country. The inspection and verification evaluates the information the US government has at the time. DHS and our federal partners investigate and we detain, remove, or refer individuals to other federal agencies for further review and prosecution if they are subsequently found to be associated with information indicating a potential national security or public safety concern. suitable In this case, the person is in prison in the United States and there is no threat to public safety.”
NBC News previously reported that another migrant, A 48-year-old Afghan named Mohammad Harvin was a terrorist in the United Statesist watch list, but released by CBP because he didn’t have enough information to add him to the watch list at the time he passed. He was in the United States for about a year before he was arrested in San Antonio. He was again released on bail After the court hearing, he was arrested again hours after NBC News published a story about his case.
A national terrorist watch list maintained by the FBI contains 1.8 million people who are considered potential security risks. The database indicates that Harvey is a member of Hizb-e-Islami, or HIG, a political and paramilitary organization designated by the United States as a terrorist organization.
According to US officials, Attoyev was not on a watch list when he crossed the border in 2022 or was arrested in April.
The percentage of migrants with terrorist connections crossing the border remains extremely low. An NBC News analysis found that the percentage of migrants on the terrorist watch list relative to the total number of CBP encounters along the U.S. border was slightly lower under the Biden administration than under the Trump administration. The average during the Biden administration was 0.02%, which is lower than the 0.05% average during the Trump administration.
In fiscal year 2023, which ends at the end of September, and sees growth border crossings, CBP conducted the most encounters at US borders with migrants on terrorist watch lists at 736 over the past six years. The second highest year was 2019, during the Trump administration, when CBP had 541 encounters with migrants on the watch list.
It is not known whether any migrants on the watch list or suspected of having links to terrorism in international notifications have been allowed into the United States under the Trump administration.