Immigrant Soldier Given U.S. Citizenship Charged with Aiding Islamic State

An immigrant from Sierra Leone, who was given U.S. citizenship and was a former member of the Army National Guard, has been arrested and charged with aiding an attack on U.S. soil on behalf of the Islamic State.

As the Department of Justice reports:

Mohamed Bailor Jalloh, 26, of Sterling, a former member of the Army National Guard, was arrested on July 3 for attempting to provide material support to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL)… Jalloh is alleged to have attempted to provide services by assisting in the procurement of weapons to be used in what he believed was going to be an attack on U.S. soil committed in the name of ISIL. In addition, the complaint alleges that Jalloh attempted to provide material support to ISIL by providing money to assist in the facilitation of individuals seeking to join ISIL.

Since 2001, the U.S. has permanently resettled nearly 1.7 million migrants from Muslim nations on green cards—including more than 30,000 migrants from Sierra Leone.

Because Jalloh was given U.S. citizenship, he would have been able to vote in U.S. elections, access federal benefits, and—through chain migration—bring family members into the country, who could potentially hold anti-American sentiments.

The Department of Justice documented the extensive time, energy, and resources federal agents devoted to preventing the attack which the foreign migrant, voluntarily admitted into the country via our federal immigration policy, is accused of plotting:

According to court documents and court proceedings, in March 2016, a now-deceased member of ISIL brokered an introduction between Jalloh, 26, of Sterling, Virginia, and an individual in the United States who actually was an FBI confidential human source (CHS). The ISIL member was actively plotting an attack in the United States and believed the attack would be carried out with the assistance of Jalloh and the CHS. According to court documents, Jalloh met with the CHS on two occasions in April and May 2016. During the April meeting, Jalloh told the CHS that he was a former member of the Virginia Army National Guard, but that he had decided to quit after listening to online lectures by Anwar al-Aulaqi, a deceased leader of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Jalloh stated that he recently had taken a six-month trip to Africa, where he had met with ISIL members in Nigeria and first began communicating online with the ISIL member who later brokered his introduction to the CHS.

Sen. Jeff Sessions has previously addressed the strain our current federal immigration policies have placed on national efforts to prevent terror attacks on U.S. soil.

“It is a full-time occupation for federal officials spread across the nation to investigate, preempt, disrupt, and prosecute terrorism cases that only exist in the first place because of immigration policy,” Sessions’ office has explained. “Preventing and responding to these acts is an effort encompassing thousands of federal agents and attorneys and billions of dollars: in effect, we are voluntarily admitting individuals at risk for terrorism and then, on the back end, trying to stop them from carrying out their violent designs.”

The Department of Justice also documents Jalloh’s alleged influences—underscoring the interconnectivity of the radicalized Islamic community.

For instance, the Justice Department states that Jalloh had been radicalized by the lectures of Anwar al-Awlaki, and had “praised the gunman who killed five U.S. military members in a terrorist attack in Chattanooga, Tennessee, in July 2015, and stated that he had been thinking about conducting an attack similar to the November 2009 attack at Ft. Hood, Texas.”

Muhammed Youssef Abdulazees, the Chattanooga shooter, was an immigrant from Kuwait, who naturalized at the age of six. Nidal Hasan, the Fort Hood shooter, was the son of a woman who emigrated from Palestine.

As multiple reports have documented, many other terrorists have been inspired by al-Awlaki. “Awlaki’s rhetoric has been linked to several terrorist attacks and plots even after he was killed by a U.S. drone strike in Yemen in 2011,” the Washington Post reported. Fort Hood shooter Nidal “Hasan developed a relationship with the cleric after hearing him lecture at the Dar al-Hijrah mosque in Northern Virginia. And Omar Mateen, who killed 49 people in a nightclub in Orlando last month, had watched videos of Awlaki.”

Mateen, the Orlando terrorist, was the child of Afghan migrants. As CBS reported, Mateen’s father has “well-known anti-American views and is an ideological supporter of the Afghan Taliban.”

Anwar Al-Awlaki was also a “spiritual advisor” to 9/11 terrorists, and his online teachings were reportedly a “key inspiration” for San Bernardino shooter, Syed Farook.

Farook, the U.S.-born child of Pakistani migrants, used his U.S. citizenship to bring his Pakistani-born jihadi bride into the country on a K-1 fiancée visa.

Just like Hasan, Mateen, Abdulazees, and Farook, Anwar Al-Awlaki’s presence in the country was only possible due to immigration. He also had U.S. citizenship, which made him a valuable asset to terror groups he served.

Awlaki, who was born to migrants from Yemen, was the beneficiary of birthright citizenship. “There’s no question that having U.S. citizenship was a clear benefit to al-Awlaki and the terrorist groups he was working directly with because they had an asset who could travel at will, and could automatically get into the United States whenever he wanted,” said NumbersUSA’s Rosemary Jenks. “The simple fact that he was born on U.S. soil, gave him every opportunity to be as destructive to the U.S. as he wanted to be because he could come here and leave at will.”

Andrew McCarthy has previously warned against importing large flows of “assimilation-resistant” migrants, who might be more susceptible to being radicalized:

Jihadism thrives when it has a support system of sharia-adherent Muslims… It is patently obvious that our security challenge is not just jihadists; it is the combination of jihadists and their support network of assimilation-resistant Muslims. Indeed, even if we could vet for all the currently active jihadists, it is from the assimilation-resistance Islamic communities that future ‘homegrown’ jihadists will emerge…

Yet House Speaker Paul Ryan, who leads the pro-Islamic migration wing of the Republican Party, has repeatedly denounced Donald Trump’s calls for curbing Islamic migration.

Ryan, seeming to echo sentiments expressed by Hillary Clinton, has said that Trump’s proposal is “not reflective of our principles.”

Unlike Trump, both Ryan and Clinton have supported continuing—and even expanding—Muslim migration into the United States.

Based on the minimum numbers Hillary Clinton has put forth thus far, as President she would permanently resettle 730,000 migrants from the Muslim world during her first term.

The Senate Immigration Subcommittee has identified at least 380 foreign-born migrants, who have been successfully convicted of terrorism or terrorism-related offenses in United States between September 11, 2001 and December 31, 2014.

This fact, however, was apparently unknown to the “fact checkers” at the Washington Post. The Washington Post‘s Glenn Kessler and Michelle Lee gave Donald Trump “four Pinocchios” for correctly stating that “there are scores of recent migrants inside our borders charged with terrorism.” They also described Trump’s factually true statement that “hundreds of recent immigrants and their children have been convicted of terrorist activity inside the United States” as “not accurate.”

Kessler and Lee bizarrely admit that even though they don’t know where Trump is getting his data from, they are positive that he is not correct. “We’re not sure exactly where Trump is getting this information, but he is still not accurate,” the two write.

However, a quick examination of the transcript of Trump’s national security speech would have shown exactly where Trump was getting his information from.

As Trump explained in his address following the Orlando terror attack: “The Senate Subcommittee on Immigration has already identified hundreds of immigrants charged with terrorist activities inside the United States since September 11th.”

Breitbart News reached out to Lee and Kessler to ask if they had read the Senate Immigration Subcommittee report, and whether the Washington Post intends to issue a retraction of this “fact check” given that Trump’s statement is indisputably correct. Lee told Breitbart that she had “not gotten a chance to look at all the data” from the Senate report “in detail.”

“I can’t comment on the report,” she wrote.