There is little to stop the terrorists behind the Moscow theater attack from joining the thousands of migrants crossing the US border and attempting something even bigger on US soil, officials warn.
Isis-K, the jihadist splinter group that killed 143 people in the March 23 massacre, sees the US as a “bigger” target and “could slip through the 3,000-kilometre-long US border with Mexico unnoticed.”
“The open border is a major concern for terrorists entering the US in light of the attacks in Moscow,” a US counterterrorism official told the newspaper. NYPost.
“We take the threat of a domestic ISIS-K attack very seriously.
“They hate us and everything we stand for. And they are brutal and always looking for targets.”
Security footage captured four Isis-K terrorists massacring 143 people at Moscow’s Crocus City Theater earlier this month in Europe’s deadliest terror attack in two decades
US security officials fear the terror group sees the US as a more attractive target and there is little to stop them from sneaking thousands of agents across the southern border.
“It only takes a few to bring terrorism into American soil,” said former Army intelligence officer Morgan Lerette
Last year, more than two million people were intercepted crossing the southern border, but no one knows how many people got through undetected.
Meanwhile, the number of intercepted migrants on the FBI’s terrorist watch list has skyrocketed from 15 in 2021 to 169 last year.
One of them, Lebanese migrant Basel Bassel Ebbadi, 22, told officials: “I’m going to try to make a bomb” after Border Patrol officials caught the Hezbollah member near El Paso, Texas, earlier this month.
Afghanistan-based Isis-K has already claimed American lives when it carried out a bomb attack that killed 183 people during the US evacuation of Kabul in 2021.
Daniel Byman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies said they are the “most operationally capable offshoot of the Islamic State” which took control of large parts of Iraq and Syria between 2016 and 2018.
The group used nationals from Tajikistan for the attack in Moscow, but Byman said they are actively recruiting in the other Central Asian countries of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.
The FBI revealed last year that Isis-K set up a smuggling network to smuggle Uzbekis into the US and that more than a dozen had disappeared after being processed by DHS officials.
FBI Director Christopher Wray flagged the danger less than two weeks before the Moscow attack when he spoke before a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing earlier this month.
Wray answered “yes” when Cornyn asked him if he was concerned about whether potential terrorists crossing the southern border earlier this month could harm Americans.
The Tajik terrorists used automatic rifles, bombs and Molotov cocktails in their attack
Social media footage showed the gunmen, dressed in camouflage clothing, opening fire inside the crowded theater in Moscow
The attack left the theater in flames and Russian society faced an unprecedented terrorist threat
The FBI discovered an ISIS terrorist cell using human trafficking operations to infiltrate the US, but its members were gone by the time they realized
At least 7.2 million people have entered the US through the southern border since President Biden took office
Marco Rubio, the commission’s vice chairman, said the briefing left him “very concerned” about the potential threat.
“I think common sense tells you that if they were running a human trafficking network, they would certainly use it to move agents into the United States,” he added.
“If they could do what they did in Moscow, in the United States, they would do it in a heartbeat. They want to do it.”
“And it’s something we have to be very vigilant about when we have a border that 9 million people have crossed in the last three years.”
Migrants crossing the border are often forced to wait several years for officials to examine their applications and decide on their status.
Most are released to roam America’s streets, including two million “high priority” cases of career criminals seeking asylum.
At the end of fiscal year 2023, on September 30, more than 6 million people were enrolled in what officials call the “non-incarcerated roll.”
And the administration’s projections, as communicated in Homeland Security documents sent to Congress, suggest the backlog will reach 8 million by October 1.
Isis-K considers the US, Russia, Iran and even their Taliban hosts in Afghanistan as enemies.
The attack in Moscow was the deadliest on European soil in more than two decades and one they would like to repeat in the US, according to Morgan Lerette, a former US Army captain and Blackwater contractor.
“It only takes a few of them to arm themselves and attack a major event, a concert, a baseball game, Times Square, to bring terrorism into American soil,” he added.
Basel Bassel Ebbadi, 22, admitted that he was a member of Hezbollah and had come “to make a bomb” when he was intercepted by agents at the Texas-Mexico border on March 9.
And Colin Clarke, an analyst at the Soufan Group security consultancy, warned that they wouldn’t need huge resources or many officers to cause a carnage once they got here.
“It will be difficult for a terrorist to build a bomb or buy a weapon here, but cheap attacks are still possible, such as ramming a car or truck,” he said. ‘Everything is possible.
‘It is common for terrorist groups to see that an attack is gaining momentum, allowing sympathizers to take action elsewhere.
“There is no doubt that this latest attack in Moscow will inspire others to act on behalf of ISIS.”