(NewsNation) — There’s been an uptick in Tajikistan migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border in the past few years, according to a report in the New York Post published Thursday.
More than 1,500 migrants from Tajikistan have come across the border between October 2020 and May 2024, leaked border data obtained by The Post shows.
In the previous 14 years before that, there had been just 26 Tajikistan nationals who crossed.
Just this year alone, there have been 500 people from the country entering the United States, despite President Joe Biden’s recent crackdown at the southern border.
Reasons for migration from Tajikistan
To get to the U.S., Texas A&M University professor Edward Lemon, who studies Central Asia, told the Post, Tajik migrants are getting help from “networks of traffickers” who “actively advertise the opportunity to come to America.”
In recent years, Lemon said, Tajiks have been recruited to terrorist organizations, like the Islamic State and ISIS-K to a greater degree than neighboring countries.
Last week, the Department of Homeland Security confirmed to NewsNation that eight men from Tajikistan with suspected ties to the Islamic State group were arrested in New York, Philadelphia and Los Angeles. The eight men had made it to a port of entry, with their criminal background checks coming back clean.
Still, Lemon noted in an interview with the New York Post that “most (Tajiks) come here, like so many others, to seek a better life.”
Lemon said large populations of Tajiks actually live outside of Tajikistan, “one of the most migration-dependent countries in the world,” and the poorest in Central Asia.
“As life in Russia has become more difficult since the invasion of Ukraine, they have sought other destinations such as Europe, the Gulf and the U.S.,” Lemon said.
The BBC in March reported life had also been difficult for people of Central Asian origin in Russia after four Tajik Nationals were arrested in connection to an attack on a suburban Moscow concert hall that killed 144 people. The massacre in the Crocus City Hall, in which gunmen shot people waiting for a show by a popular rock band and then set the building on fire, was the deadliest terrorist attack seen in Europe since 2004. ISIS-K claimed responsibility following the attack.
An increase in beatings, vandalism and episodes of racism, including the burning down of a migrant-owned business in Russia, and taxi drivers in Moscow asking clients to confirm they weren’t Tajiks, led the country’s embassy of Tajikistan to warn its citizens not to leave their homes unless necessary, the BBC wrote.
Is threat level being raised?
Following the ISIS-K terror attack in Moscow, FBI Director Christopher Wray warned lawmakers about the potential for a similar coordinated assault in the United States at a Senate committee hearing. Wray previously testified before Congress about concerns that human smuggling operations at the border were bringing in people with possible connections to terror groups.
Asked at a White House press briefing this week about whether President Joe Biden is considering raising the terror alert level in light of these incidents, National Security Adviser John Kirby said he was not aware of any decisions to change it.
“We’re watching this like a hawk every single day,” he told reporters.
Border Patrol is already on the lookout for anyone coming from countries designated as state sponsors of terror — a long list that includes Iran, Cuba, Syria and North Korea.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.