US says a smuggler with terrorist ties helped get migrants from Uzbekistan into the country

The Biden administration said yesterday [Macau time] that it detected and stopped a network attempting to smuggle people from Uzbekistan into the United States and that at least one member of the network had links to a foreign terrorist group.

U.S. officials do not believe the Uzbek nationals who used the smuggling network had any terrorist ties or were planning a terrorist attack, said a statement from National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson.

The statement did not specify the foreign terrorist group, but a U.S. official told The Associated Press that it was the Islamic State. The official was not authorized to speak about the ongoing investigation and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The U.S. worked with governments overseas to detain key members of the smuggling network, including the person with the foreign terrorism links, the NSC said. The statement did not specify how the person was linked to the terrorist group or what governments the U.S. worked with to apprehend the smugglers.

The FBI, which has been investigating, also stressed that it had not identified any specific terrorism threat associated with the migrants.