Fmr. Obama ICE Director: Migrants Coming with ISIS-Linked Smuggling Group Show We Have Insufficient Vetting

On Wednesday’s broadcast of “NewsNation Now,” John Sandweg, who served as acting ICE Director under President Obama, stated that the report that DHS identified more than 400 migrants who were brought to the United States by a human smuggling network affiliated with ISIS “highlights the vulnerabilities we’re facing along our southern border,” and said that “we need to tighten up things here, especially on the vetting on the front end, because almost all of these individuals were apprehended and ultimately released into the United States to await their immigration court hearings.”

Sandweg said he has confidence in ICE to find these individuals, because they’re good at doing that, “But, obviously, look, a concerning story. And I think it highlights the vulnerabilities we’re facing along our southern border, and really emphasizes the need to address the issue permanently and get that — get the situation fixed.”

He added, “I think, first of all, Natasha, look, we have — there’s a problem with vetting. They recently did — the DHS inspector general came out and highlighted some concerns that they found in their kind of audit evaluation of the DHS vetting operations. So, the first thing we need to do is make sure that all accessible federal databases, when an individual is apprehended at the border, we take their biometrics, they’re run against various databases, we need to ensure that, in real-time and incredibly quickly, we get the results, right? If there’s any derogatory information, any intelligence to suggest the individual’s a threat or linked to ISIS, that that is known right away.”

Sandweg continued, “Now, part of the challenge here is we still don’t know what the nature of this threat is. So, I don’t want to overemphasize it, right? We know that a smuggling organization has been bringing individuals from Central Asia and then that smuggling organization had some links to ISIS. That doesn’t necessarily mean that these individuals were plotting an attack against the United States or actually were members of ISIS. Moreover, Natasha, it’s really important to emphasize that we have an incredibly robust intelligence apparatus focused on terror threats like ISIS…Secretary Mayorkas was on TV today, indicated that there is no known threat stream. So, we don’t have any of that corroborating intelligence that would suggest these terror groups are looking to exploit our border. Nevertheless, it’s really clear that we need to tighten up things here, especially on the vetting on the front end, because almost all of these individuals were apprehended and ultimately released into the United States to await their immigration court hearings.”

Sandweg concluded, “[G]enerally, we have incredible intelligence services in the United States. And before these individuals get to the United States, we should know about that, right?”

Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett

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