Central Asia: Illegal Migration and the Terror Threat
Central Asia is a catch-all term for the ‘Stans’ group of countries once part of the Soviet Union: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. They have a combined area nearly six times larger than Texas and a population four times larger than the state of New York, but this large region contributed very few immigrants to the U.S. until quite recently. The statistics concerning migrants from this region are revealing.
Statistics from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) show a clear trend of increased recent Central Asian migration to the U.S. The record-high asylum backlog of over 3,000,000 cases includes over 14,000 Central Asian nationals, an unprecedented high. Uzbek nationals alone contribute over 8,000 cases to this number, over eight times the number for Uzbek nationals in 2019. Tajikistan has gone from just a few dozen asylum applicants a year to over 700 a year. This asylum backlog data is a solid lagging indicator of illegal immigration from Central Asia, and it shows that it is skyrocketing just like illegal migration from previously unrepresented countries and regions.
It is not just data from TRAC that shows this pattern. Other sources, such as reports from U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) have noticed a surge in Central Asian nationals at the border. This is important for national security reasons. Central Asia has struggled for years with Islamist extremism. As tensions grow geopolitically, individuals with extreme beliefs may choose to move to strike the U.S. In early 2023, a group of Central Asian migrants were apprehended by CBP and it transpired they had been smuggled by an individual with links to terror group ISIS. Open borders are clearly an invite extremists may not be able to refuse.
This is something the national security community in the U.S. appears to be greatly concerned about. FBI Director Christopher Wray told the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee in November 2023 that the terror threat to America was at “…a whole other level”, and migration of individuals from regions where terror groups are active should clearly be a source of concern. This is no idle thought experiment and there have already been attacks and other examples of support for terrorism linked to migrants from Central Asia in the U.S.
It has sadly already been proven that migrants from that troubled region have sometimes acted against the U.S. in support of terrorism. These include the attacks of October 2017 by Uzbek migrant Sayfullo Saipov, killing eight people in a truck attack in New York. There have also been foiled plots by Uzbek nationals, such as funding terror groups overseas, trying to join ISIS, and plotting to bomb U.S. military bases. The national security implications of migration from this troubled region have already touched America and Americans, and could possibly do so again without dramatic security changes.
Weak Biden Administration policies have sent a message that is being heard worldwide: if you can make it to the U.S., you are almost guaranteed to enter, with little to no prospect of removal. This has driven migration from regions that once constituted very small percentages of U.S. migration numbers, such as Africa and increasingly Central Asia as well. The message has also clearly penetrated the heart of Eurasia, and each year, more and more migrants have responded to that message by coming to the U.S. While most are economic migrants, the small number of terrorists are a threat we cannot ignore.