espionage
After Suspected Tajik Terrorist Arrests,Little-Known Biden Border Entry Program Demands Hard Focus

From Todd Bensman as published June 20, 2024 in The Daily Wire
The ‘CBP One’ phone app entry scheme has brought in 888 other Tajiks, plus thousands more, from nations of terrorism concern
A multi-state FBI counterterrorism wiretap sting has rolled up eight Tajikistani nationals in three cities who had entered over the U.S. Southwest Border and were plotting some sort of bombing.
On its own, what little is known about this terrible new consequence of President Joe Biden’s ongoing historic mass migration border crisis – a coordinated, large-cell infiltration attack on the homeland – ranked as startling enough to draw congressional demands for much more basic information than the administration will currently release.
“Unfortunately, the unacceptable security failures that have allowed individuals with terrorist ties to enter the United States through the Southwest Border have become an alarming pattern under the administration,” states a recent U.S. House Homeland Security Committee letter demanding the Biden administration disclose how it failed here.
Not yet demanded, however, is attention to a recent revelation about the Tajik Eight case that should propel what is happening at the border to an even higher and broader level of national security concern. NBC News has reported that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), of all agencies, actually vetted and pre-approved the entry of at least one of the busted Tajikistanis on the administration’s “CBP One” phone app — a humanitarian parole scheme.
The CBP One phone app-based entry program has allowed more than 500,000 foreign nationals from 100 different countries who intended to illegally cross the border to instead schedule a DHS-approved “legal” escort through eight U.S.-Mexico land ports, according to information exclusively obtained and reported by the Center for Immigration Studies through Freedom of Information Act litigation over the past year.
The Biden administration began piloting the program in May 2021 but dramatically expanded it in January 2023, it said, as a means to clear politically damaging illegal entry border congestion.
Almost all 500,000, we are assured, were supposedly well vetted for security, then granted quick release into the United States, sight unseen, on two-year, renewable permits that also come with work authorization eligibility.
But the NBC revelation that one or more of the arrested Tajiks used the CBP One land ports entry scheme warrants new scrutiny about that land port pipeline into the country. It poses a unique national security risk, quite separate from traditional illegal border crossings, especially the vetting that is supposedly done byDHS before passage is granted.
In this case, the vetting obviously didn’t work.. But for how many others did the vetting system not work? The odds do not look promising.
It turns out that DHS personnel have approved not one or two problematic Tajiks of malintent for passage, but hundreds from that Muslim-majority country of U.S. terrorism concern over the past couple of years – and literally thousands from some two dozen other nations of terrorism concern, according to an analysis of the center’s FOIA lawsuit data on this program.
From its May 2021 inception through at least December 2023, DHS approved 888 Tajiks for land port passage and release into the country on the two-year humanitarian parole releases, no doubt many more during the first half of 2024.
And they are the least of a rich diversity of foreign nationals from two dozen nations of terrorism concern that the administration has wittingly allowed through the pipeline.
Thousands More Approved For Entry
The historical context as a homeland security matter for these entries is important to know. To reduce the risk of terrorist border infiltration a few years after 9/11, the U.S. homeland security enterprise began tagging those arriving from some 35-40 nations where Islamic terrorist groups operate as “special interest aliens,” or SIAs, which flagged them for detention and additional security vetting. The Biden administration now uses the term “special interest migrants” internally.
SIAs are not regarded as terrorists but, because they arrive from nations where avowed anti-U.S. terrorist groups are prevalent, homeland security protocols dating back to a 2004 CBP Memorandum required extra security procedures for those coming from the designated list of countries. Tajikistan has been on that list from the beginning.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection. November 1, 2004.
In addition to the 888 Tajiks allowed in through the CBP One app program, DHS has authorized thousands more from 24 special interest countries to enter, including from Afghanistan (653), and smatterings from Iran (27), Lebanon (10), Syria (7), Iraq (4), Egypt (6), and Jordan (5). But the largest numbers of SIAs let in are coming from other Muslim-majority former Soviet republics in Central Asia neighboring Tajikistan, such as Kyrgyzstan (4,224 through December), Uzbekistan (2,071), and Kazakhstan (585).
The terrorism section of the CIA’s “World Factbook” notes that U.S.-designated foreign terrorist groups have long operated in the dangerous neighborhood that all three of the most numerous of the SIAs hail from: the Kyrgyz Republic, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan. Afghanistan is in the same tough neighborhood.
Among the groups operating in those three countries are the Islamic Jihad Union, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, and ISIS-Khorasan (ISIS-K). But there are many other extremist groups operating in the region too, such as the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan and various ISIS-affiliated groups the government has suppressed, according to the U.S. State Department’s 2021 Country Report on Terrorism for Tajikistan, and who might want to flee to the United States.
The same report notes that terrorist group members move throughout the mostly unguarded borders of these countries, with Tajikistan asserting that “thousands of militants” come and go from neighboring Afghanistan.
As one indication of public sentiment toward Islamic extremist ideology in the Kyrgyz Republic, an estimated 850 of its citizens reportedly joined ISIS between 2013 and 2015, and regional scholars insist the real number is higher, according to George Washington University’s Program on Extremism.
Uzbekistan also has figured prominently in global counterterrorism efforts, in part because the internationally designated terrorist organization known as the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan has had regional and global reach and regularly conducts attacks. Extremists from Uzbekistan have been implicated in U.S. attacks and plots too. Hundreds of Uzbeks also fought for ISIS and many have returned.
At issue with the entry of one or more of the Tajik Eight, along with the thousands of other government-authorized entries of SIAs, is whether the Biden administration’s DHS is conducting effective enhanced security screening.
Failing Security Screening
DHS Secretary Alejandra Mayorkas has repeatedly assured the American public that security vetting for this program is its highlight.
DHS policy documents say all approved CBP One applicants pass “rigorous biometric and biographic national security and public safety screening and vetting.”
CBP agents and U.S. processors, however, mainly run this information through criminal and domestic national security databases looking for matches to U.S. criminal records, warrants, and terrorism watch lists, those who do this work say. A DHS source with direct knowledge of government vetting processes for the CBP One land port parole program, who was not authorized to speak or be identified, told me last fall that all of the SIAs going through the CBP One appointment and parole at the land ports are run through more databases than non-SIA applicants — these ones containing classified intelligence information — as a means to detect terrorism problems.
But this vetting process is deeply flawed, experts say, because of a presumption that only fractional few real terrorists ever make intelligence databases. Database checks can’t detect information that is not in them.
“The only thing we can query is information that we have,” former FBI Director James Comey once said of vetting foreign national refugees. “So, if we have no information on someone, they’ve never crossed our radar screen, they’ve never been a ripple in the pond, there will be no record of them there and so it will be challenging.”
Neither can U.S. intelligence agencies very well check for derogatory information with governments that are diplomatically hostile to the United States and would never cooperate, such as Iran, Syria, Yemen, and Afghanistan.
Pertinent Questions
“That’s a really hard target to analyze, and to just shoot from the hip and let them in is absolute insanity in my book,” said James G. Conway, a retired FBI counterterrorism agent who after 9/11 worked in Mexico trying to detect terrorists within the SIA flows. “How would you knowingly and wittingly bring people from terrorist countries into the United States with that level of vetting? Some of these terrorism countries don’t even have an electric grid let alone a computer system, and you can’t scrub them on databases that don’t exist. The whole thing is insane to me.
“What’s the motivation? I mean, why would they do that?” Conway added, referencing the Biden administration’s approval of SIAs for the CBP One entry program.
That’s a pertinent question that lawmakers, media pundits, and reporters might start asking before there’s blood in American streets.
2025 Federal Election
Hong Kong-Canadian Groups Demand PM Carney Drop Liberal Candidate Over “Bounty” Remark Supporting CCP Repression

Sam Cooper
Thirteen Hong Kong-Canadian organizations are calling on Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Liberal Party to immediately revoke the candidacy of MP Paul Chiang, alleging he “may have violated Canadian laws” after making explosive remarks that appeared to endorse a Chinese Communist Party bounty targeting a Toronto-area Conservative candidate.
The controversy centers on Chiang’s comments during a January meeting with Chinese-language media in Toronto, where the Markham–Unionville Liberal incumbent said, “If you can take him to the Chinese Consulate General in Toronto, you can get the million-dollar reward,” referring to Joe Tay, the Conservative candidate in Don Valley North who is wanted by Hong Kong authorities for running a pro-democracy YouTube channel in Canada.
The response from Mark Carney’s Liberals appears increasingly conflicted, especially in light of remarks made last year by the party’s top foreign affairs official concerning Chinese transnational repression targeting Hong Kong immigrants in Canada.
Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly issued a warning in December, stating: “This attempt by Hong Kong authorities to conduct transnational repression abroad, including by issuing threats, intimidation or coercion against Canadians or those in Canada, will not be tolerated.”
Tay had remained silent since the revelations broke Friday. But on Sunday evening, he made his first public statement in a post on X.
“This is the most challenging time in our lifetime, and we must give it everything we’ve got to protect this place we call home. A fourth term for the Liberals is not an option,” Tay wrote.
About the same time, Paul Chiang posted his own statement on social media, offering a direct apology to Tay.
“Today, I spoke with Joseph Tay, the Conservative candidate for Don Valley North, to personally apologize for the comments that I made this past January. It was a terrible lapse of judgement. I recognize the severity of the statement and I am deeply disappointed in myself. As a 28-year police veteran, I have always strived to treat people with respect and dignity. In this case, I failed to meet that standard. I know better and it will never happen again.”
Despite the apology, a Carney campaign spokesperson told reporters Sunday that the party would not remove Chiang from the ballot.
Now, leading Hong Kong Canadian advocacy groups are intensifying pressure, saying Chiang’s comments amount to a tacit endorsement of Beijing’s foreign repression network — a growing concern for Canadian authorities, especially after Ottawa’s diplomatic expulsion of a Chinese official last year over threats to MP Michael Chong’s family.
“The integrity of Canada’s democratic elections has been damaged,” the groups wrote in a joint statement. “Paul Chiang’s actions may have violated Canadian laws, including the Foreign Interference and Security of Information Act and the Canada Elections Act.”
Meanwhile, as the chorus of political condemnation grew beyond criticism from Conservative Party leaders, NDP MP Jenny Kwan — herself a victim of targeted Chinese interference, according to testimony at the Hogue Commission — stood with NDP leader Jagmeet Singh and several candidates in Vancouver and addressed the Chiang scandal directly.
“He is a police officer, and he ought to know that when the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] went out and put a bounty on anybody, including Canadians, that cannot be acceptable. That is intimidation at its worst,” Kwan said.
“And yet, he played right into it. He advocated for people to bring [Tay] to the Chinese consulate to collect the bounty. In what universe is this normal?”
Kwan added the remarks are especially damaging while Canada is facing “active, sophisticated foreign interference activities targeting Canada’s democratic institutions.”
The Hong Kong Canadian groups described Chiang’s apology as “insincere” and “a tactic to downplay the seriousness of his outrageous comments.” They argue that any politician “truly sympathetic to oppressed Hongkongers” would never suggest delivering a Canadian citizen to a hostile foreign government’s diplomatic outpost.
“Chiang’s remarks legitimize foreign interference and potentially threaten Tay’s safety,” the statement reads. “This is not just about an offhand comment — it’s about whether our elected officials are willing to stand up to transnational repression or not.”
The joint release also cites findings from a national survey showing that 85.4% of Hongkonger-Canadian respondents are deeply concerned about transnational repression and infiltration in Canada, while 40.9% reported reducing public political engagement due to safety fears.
“Chiang’s remarks exemplify how foreign interference continues to cast a shadow over Hong Kong immigrants’ lives in Canada,” the groups said, emphasizing that more than 60% of respondents are alarmed by Canada’s handling of relations with China, particularly the influence of Chinese diplomatic institutions operating within Canadian borders.
“The Liberal Party must send a clear message that intimidation or threats against political candidates will not be tolerated,” the statement continues. “Canadians — particularly those who fled authoritarian regimes — deserve a democracy free from foreign interference.”
The Bureau has contacted the Liberal Party for further comment. This is a developing story. More to follow.
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2025 Federal Election
Canadian officials warn Communist China ‘highly likely’ to interfere in 2025 election

From LifeSiteNews
The Canadian government believes China will use specific tools ahead of the April election such as AI and social media to specifically target ‘Chinese ethnic, cultural, and religious communities in Canada using clandestine and deceptive means.’
Canadian officials from the Security and Intelligence Threats to Elections (SITE) Task Force warned that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) government will most likely try to interfere in Canada’s upcoming federal election.
Vanessa Lloyd, chair of the task force, observed during a March 24 press conference that “it is expected that the People’s Republic of China, or PRC, will likely continue to target Canadian democratic institutions and civil society to advance its strategic objectives.”
SITE is made up of representatives of multiple Canadian departments and agencies that have a security mandate.
Lloyd’s regular job is as the Deputy Director of Operations, second in charge, for Canada’s spy agency, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS).
According to Lloyd, officials from China as well as CCP proxies will be “likely to conduct foreign interference activity using a complex array of both overt and covert mechanisms.”
Her warning comes after the final report from the Foreign Interference Commission concluded that operatives from the CCP may have had a hand in helping to elect a handful of MPs in both the 2019 and 2021 Canadian federal elections. It also concluded that China was the primary foreign interference threat to Canada.
The commission shed light on how CCP agents and proxies conduct election interference, with one method being to rally community groups to make sure certain election candidates are looked down upon.
According to Lloyd, it is “highly likely” that China will engage in certain election meddling using specific tools such as AI.
“The PRC is highly likely to use AI-enabled tools to attempt to interfere with Canada’s democratic process in this current election,” she noted, adding that China will also use social media as well to “specifically target Chinese ethnic, cultural, and religious communities in Canada using clandestine and deceptive means.”
Lloyd also noted that the Indian government could also be involved in meddling, as it has the “intent and capability” to “assert its geopolitical influence.”
Canada will hold its next federal election on April 28 after Prime Minister Mark Carney triggered it on Sunday.
As reported by LifeSiteNews earlier in the month, a new exposé by investigative journalist Sam Cooper claims there is compelling evidence that Carney and former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau are strongly influenced by an “elite network” of foreign actors, including those with ties to communist China and the World Economic Forum.
In light of multiple accusations of foreign meddling in Canadian elections, the federal Foreign Interference Commission was convened last year to “examine and assess the interference by China, Russia, and other foreign states or non-state actors, including any potential impacts, to confirm the integrity of, and any impacts on, the 43rd and 44th general elections (2019 and 2021 elections) at the national and electoral district levels.”
The commission was formed after Trudeau’s special rapporteur, former Governor General David Johnston, failed in an investigation into CCP allegations after much delay. That inquiry was not done in public and was headed by Johnston, who is a “family friend” of Trudeau.
Johnston quit as “special rapporteur” after a public outcry following his conclusion that there should not be a public inquiry into the matter. Conservative MPs demanded Johnston be replaced over his ties to China and the Trudeau family.
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