ICE deports man who smuggled terrorist suspects into U.S.

The U.S. announced this week that it has deported Sharafat Ali Khan, a man convicted of running a major smuggling network for illegal immigrants from terrorist havens in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Khan orchestrated the smuggling of more than 100 illegal immigrants from those regions. They would fly to Brazil, where he was based, then make their way up the spine of South America and Mexico to the U.S., using a network of people Khan worked with along the way, authorities said.

Some of the people smuggled “had suspected ties to terrorist organizations,” U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said in announcing the deportation.

One of the men Khan helped reach the U.S. had been flagged on the terrorist no-fly list, with family ties to the Taliban, and had been implicated in a plot to conduct an attack in the U.S. or Canada, The Washington Times reported.

Khan, 33, was sent back to his home country of Pakistan, where authorities took custody of him without incident.

He had claimed he was just a cog in a larger smuggling operation but ICE Homeland Security Investigations agents said he was a major orchestrator.

Armed with that information, a federal judge had sentenced him to 31 months.

“Just because you had good intentions doesn’t mean the people you were helping have good intentions. People could have died, people could have gotten injured, families could have lost loved ones,” Judge Reggie B. Walton scolded Khan.

Khan had pleaded for a lower sentence, complaining he felt singled out by ICE agents.

“Perhaps my misfortune is that I am a poor Pakistani,” he told the court during sentencing.

During the investigation, federal authorities identified others involved in the smuggling operation. The Times withheld names at the request of the government, which said it was working to snare them.