Sources: 8 People with Possible ISIS Ties Arrested in US

WASHINGTON, DC - JUNE 4: FBI Director Christopher Wray testifies during a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee hearing on the FBI's proposed budget for the 2025 fiscal year on June 4, 2024 in Washington, DC.   Samuel Corum/Getty Images/AFP
WASHINGTON, DC - JUNE 4: FBI Director Christopher Wray testifies during a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee hearing on the FBI's proposed budget for the 2025 fiscal year on June 4, 2024 in Washington, DC. Samuel Corum/Getty Images/AFP
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Sources: 8 People with Possible ISIS Ties Arrested in US

WASHINGTON, DC - JUNE 4: FBI Director Christopher Wray testifies during a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee hearing on the FBI's proposed budget for the 2025 fiscal year on June 4, 2024 in Washington, DC.   Samuel Corum/Getty Images/AFP
WASHINGTON, DC - JUNE 4: FBI Director Christopher Wray testifies during a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee hearing on the FBI's proposed budget for the 2025 fiscal year on June 4, 2024 in Washington, DC. Samuel Corum/Getty Images/AFP

Eight people from Tajikistan with suspected ties to ISIS have been arrested in the United States in recent days, according to multiple people familiar with the matter.
The arrests took place in New York, Philadelphia and Los Angeles and the individuals, who entered the US through the southern border, are being held on immigration violations, said the people, who were not authorized to discuss the ongoing investigation by name and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
The nature of their suspected connections to ISIS was not immediately clear, but the individuals were being tracked by the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force, or JTTF. They were in the custody of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which made the arrests while working with the JTTF, pending proceedings to remove them from the country.
The individuals from Tajikistan entered the country last spring and passed through the US government's screening process without turning up information that would have identified them as potential terrorism-related concerns, said one of the people familiar with the matter.
The FBI and Department of Homeland Security issued a statement confirming the immigration-related arrests of “several non-citizens” but did not detail specifics. The agencies noted that the US has been in a “heightened threat environment.”
FBI Director Christopher Wray has said the US is facing accelerating threats from homegrown violent extremists as well as foreign terrorist organizations, particularly in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas on Israel.
He said at one recent congressional hearing that officials were "concerned about the terrorism implications from potential targeting of vulnerabilities at the border.”

The Biden administration in August said that it had detected and stopped a network attempting to smuggle people from Uzbekistan into the US and that at least one member of the network had links to a foreign terrorist group.
“The FBI and DHS will continue working around the clock with our partners to identify, investigate, and disrupt potential threats to national security,” the agencies said.



Palestinian Protest Leader Detained by US Misses Son’s Birth 

Student negotiator Mahmoud Khalil is seen at a pro-Palestinian protest encampment on the Columbia University campus in New York, April 29, 2024. (AP)
Student negotiator Mahmoud Khalil is seen at a pro-Palestinian protest encampment on the Columbia University campus in New York, April 29, 2024. (AP)
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Palestinian Protest Leader Detained by US Misses Son’s Birth 

Student negotiator Mahmoud Khalil is seen at a pro-Palestinian protest encampment on the Columbia University campus in New York, April 29, 2024. (AP)
Student negotiator Mahmoud Khalil is seen at a pro-Palestinian protest encampment on the Columbia University campus in New York, April 29, 2024. (AP)

Detained pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil missed the birth of his son on Monday after US authorities refused a temporary release, his wife said.

A graduate student at New York's Columbia University who was one of the most visible leaders of nationwide campus protests against Israel's war in Gaza, Khalil was arrested by immigration authorities on March 8.

He was ordered deported even though he was a permanent US resident through his American citizen wife, Noor Abdalla.

Abdalla said that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) denied a request to release Khalil temporarily for the birth of their child.

"This was a purposeful decision by ICE to make me, Mahmoud and our son suffer," she said in a statement.

"My son and I should not be navigating his first days on earth without Mahmoud. ICE and the Trump administration have stolen these precious moments from our family in an attempt to silence Mahmoud's support for Palestinian freedom," she said.

She gave birth in New York. Khalil was transferred to the southern state of Louisiana in an apparent bid to find a judge sympathetic to President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown.

Trump's advisors have accused pro-Palestinian protesters of promoting anti-Semitism and terrorism, charges the activists deny.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has invoked a law approved during the 1950s Red Scare that allows the United States to remove foreigners seen as adverse to US foreign policy.

Rubio argues that US constitutional protections of free speech do not apply to foreigners and that he alone can make decisions without judicial review.

Hundreds of students have seen their visas revoked, with some saying they were targeted for everything from writing opinion articles to minor arrest records.

Immigration authorities last week arrested another Columbia University student active in the protests, Mohsen Mahdawi, as he attended an interview seeking to become a US citizen.