How terrorists hide as legal immigrants

What are the terrorism and extremism risks to U.S. national security posed by legal immigration?

Immigration and Customs Enforcement is insufficiently tasked as a counterterrorism agency, which is hardly its fault. ICE catches many more criminals and immigration fraudsters than it does foreign extremists and terrorists.

Still, the second Trump administration has unquestionably broadcast the terrorism threat caused by immigration, legal or not. On his very first day back in office, President Donald Trump signed an executive order protecting Americans “from aliens who intend to commit terrorist attacks, threaten our national security, espouse hateful ideology, or otherwise exploit the immigration laws for malevolent purposes.”

The White House justified this with claims that not only do foreigners coming here threaten U.S. national security, but many are scammers, including thousands of foreigners fraudulently claiming federal benefits, including Medicaid (among them four persons on the terrorist watch list).

Democrats have pooh-poohed all this as MAGA political theater, but there’s no doubt that the Biden administration witnessed a massive jump in the number of suspect foreigners entering this country with minimal, if any, security vetting. Even if the accusations of House Republicans last year that the Biden White House released at least hundreds of suspected foreign terrorists into the United States represent a worst-case scenario, the threat is real.

But what about the terrorist-extremist threat from legal immigrants? This is a controversial subject, given political sensitivities, but counterterrorism professionals are keenly aware of this problem, which is hardly new. Ever since al Qaeda’s Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York City’s twin towers and the Pentagon, the federal government, led by ICE (which was created during post-9/11 security reforms), has made weeding out terrorists and extremists entering the U.S. a key mission.

How well are they doing?

It would be unwise to assume that the relative paucity of domestic terrorist attacks inside this country perpetrated by foreigners over the last two decades, much less the lack of large-scale attacks, can be attributed mainly to ICE’s excellence. At least as significant a factor here is how competent the FBI has become at thwarting terrorist attacks inside the U.S. The FBI is greatly helped in its efforts to stop attacks “left of boom,” as the pros say, by the commonplace lack of competence and operational security among would-be terrorists.

Take the fresh case of Abdullah Haji Zada, an 18-year-old Afghan national. This month, he pleaded guilty to his role in a jihadist terrorist plot to shoot up voting sites in Oklahoma City on last year’s Election Day. Zada, who was legally in the U.S., agreed as part of his plea deal to be removed from the country and return to Afghanistan at the end of his prison sentence.

This plot, which was to be executed on behalf of the Islamic State, involved another Afghan national, 27-year-old Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi, who was admitted to the U.S. as a refugee not long after the 2001 fall of Kabul to the Taliban. Tawhedi, who is awaiting trial, was employed in his native country by the CIA as a security guard. It was reported that Tawhedi passed two security checks, so either the CIA missed his radicalization or Tawhedi embraced violent extremism while he was in the U.S.

The good news is that the FBI stopped this murderous plot early. As usual, the terrorists were sloppy in their planning. However, nothing in this case inspires confidence in federal vetting of immigrants. Clearly, ICE and partner agencies must do better — but how?

It’s time to dispense with niceties and euphemisms. The terrorist-extremist threat we face from immigrants comes overwhelmingly from the Muslim world. There will be outliers — for example, the ICE arrest last week of Harpreet Singh, a Sikh extremist and one of India’s most wanted men. But from any profiling aspect, the strong majority of extremists we need to prevent from becoming immigrants are Muslims with radical views.

It’s not enough to keep out Islamic State fans. No visa applicant is going to admit terrorist membership anyway. It’s time for ICE to ban the Muslim Brotherhood and its fronts. That’s been the preeminent Sunni extremist organization for nearly a century and a top terrorism incubator worldwide. If you want to live in an Islamist theocracy, as the Brotherhood seeks, you’re not a good fit with American values. This is particularly true now, when Brotherhood-linked groups have played a leading role in harassing and intimidating Jews on American college campuses.

Moreover, banning the Brotherhood is a perfectly mainstream concept in Muslim countries, several of which have long banned the group on security grounds. Jordan, a close U.S. ally and intelligence partner, joined the list last week by banning the Muslim Brotherhood and its fronts due to their involvement in terrorism. Why, then, does the U.S. invite Muslim Brotherhood members to immigrate and operate freely here?