Duval Times

According to reports, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has identified more than 400 illegal migrants who crossed U.S. borders as part of an ISIS-affiliated human smuggling network.

U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) has been warning about this smuggling network for months. In March 2024, at a Senate Select Committee on Intelligence hearing, FBI Director Christopher Wray confirmed to Rubio there are “dangerous threats that emanate from our border.”

"There is a network we’re concerned about that has facilitators involved in it that have ties to ISIS and other terrorist organizations," said Rubio.

"Correct," replied Wray.

In April 2024, Rubio warned about the smuggling ring on the Senate floor. "Beyond that, as the director of the FBI has acknowledged, ISIS generates income by running a human smuggling ring that brings migrants to the United States. Just the bare minimum of common sense would lead you to conclude that if ISIS has a business to smuggle migrants into the U.S., why wouldn’t they use that to smuggle a few terrorists here to do in America what they did in Moscow a few weeks ago? We have Hamas, and we have Hezbollah, and we have all these terror groups encouraging and supporting violent mobs calling for intifada inside America. We already have people here on student visas calling for death to America. And ISIS controls a migrant smuggling ring that they can use to bring people into the United States to conduct attacks."

In May 2024, Rubio penned an op-ed titled "Biden’s open border lets ISIS walk right into US." He wrote: "Things look even grimmer when you consider the public reporting that foreign smugglers with ISIS ties have facilitated illegal immigration at the southern border…. The answer to this problem is simple: secure the border and enforce America’s immigration laws. Yet,…President Biden has done nothing to reverse the open-border policies he campaigned on and spent the last three years enacting. This is unacceptable and places American lives in jeopardy…. We’re playing right into the hands of terrorists who seek our destruction. I hope and pray I’m wrong, but I fear that under this administration’s policies, we are sitting ducks…."

Rubio echoed those concerns in March on Fox & Friends, Face The Nation, and ABC's This Week.