(CNN) — Local police along the southern U.S. border have been given a heads-up about the possible presence of a Somali with suspected ties to a notorious militant group, a law enforcement official told CNN on Friday.

A Department of Homeland Security notice, sent “out of an abundance of caution,” alerted police about a man named Mohamed Ali who might be a member of Al-Shabaab, the Islamist militant group fighting the Somali government.

The official said that the notice was based on raw intelligence data gleaned from a variety of sources and that it was uncorroborated. It is not known when the alert was issued.

It isn’t known if the man is trying to enter the United States from Mexico, the official said.

The federal law enforcement official said it is standard to send out an advisory to local police, even when the information may be uncorroborated, because the information could turn out to be true.

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