Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested Middle Eastern migrants with suspected ties to terrorism in the first week of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation operation.
The hundreds of ICE arrests since Trump was sworn in last Monday include a Jordanian linked to Islamic State, or ISIS, and a Turkish national who is a “known or suspected terrorist,” the administration said via White House and ICE statements. This comes after Biden administration border authorities encountered at least 382 illegal migrants on the terrorist watchlist and released at least 99 into the country, including an al-Shabaab member who roamed the country for ten months.
“Under President Trump’s leadership, @ICEgov agents are working tirelessly to protect our communities,” the White House said in an X post Sunday before describing an unnamed “Jordanian national with suspected ties to ISIS” arrested the day prior. The suspected terrorist from Turkey is 30-year-old Gokhan Adriguzel, who does not yet appear in ICE’s detention database.
MAKE AMERICA SAFE AGAIN: A Jordanian national with suspected ties to ISIS was arrested by ICE Buffalo/Rouses Point on January 24, 2025. pic.twitter.com/l0s98JDjYa
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) January 26, 2025
ICE’s press office and its Buffalo, New York, field office, which arrested the Jordanian, did not immediately respond to inquiries from the Daily Caller News Foundation.
ICE made 956 arrests on Sunday, more than three times the daily arrests under the Biden administration. Trump’s immigration officials have made more than 2,000 arrests since he took office.
The Department of Homeland Security’s Homeland Threat Assessment for 2025 warned in October that “individuals with terrorism ties … will continue their efforts to exploit migration flows and the complex border security environment to enter the United States.” Agencies warned a year earlier that Islamist groups inspired by the Israel-Hamas war could be sending operatives across the border and later caught a Hezbollah member trying to cross.
Additionally, experts have sounded the alarm over a potential ISIS resurgence around the world after a U.S. citizen and military veteran rammed a truck through a New Year’s Day parade in New Orleans and killed 15 people before police fatally shot him. The FBI found an ISIS flag and explosive devices in his vehicle.
Illegal migration has exacerbated the problem as news broke last June that the DHS had identified more than 400 migrants who entered the U.S. through an ISIS-linked smuggling network. The agency announced later in October that it deported some ISIS-linked Tajik nationals identified over the summer but did not specify how many.
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