Two 16-year-old girls living in New York have been detained since last month on immigration violations amid concerns they were potential recruits for a suicide bomb plot that never materialized, The Associated Press quoted officials as saying on April 7.

The girls — one from Bangladesh, one from Guinea — were picked up by authorities on March 24 and put in a detention center in Leesport, P.A., the officials said.

Details about the case, first reported on April 7 by The New York Times, were sketchy, and a supporter of one of the girls claimed the accusations were false.

The Times cited a government document that said the FBI believed the girls posed “an imminent threat to the security of the U.S. based upon evidence that they plan to be suicide bombers.”

The Associated Press quoted two law enforcement officials confirming the content of the document, but suggested that it may have exaggerated the threat.

Investigators were concerned that girls might be recruited sometime in the future for a suicide mission by a suspect in an ongoing terrorism investigation, one of the officials was quoted as saying.

Marc A. Raimondi, a spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a division of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, would confirm only that two juveniles had been arrested on “administrative immigration violations” and remain in federal custody, the report said.

Adem Carroll, a community activist with the Islamic Circle of North America, told The Times that one of the girls, a Bangladeshi, had been arrested after she stopped attending public high school in September.

Federal immigration agents investigated her home and discovered an essay about suicide and Islam on her computer, Carroll said.

(Compiled from news dispatches by Anurag Sharma)