Tag: terrorism

Watchdog finds Border Patrol failed to screen possible terror-linked aliens, lacks a uniform policy

The Department of Homeland Security watchdog found that at least one Border Patrol office failed to adequately screen aliens with possible links to terrorism because the agency did not have a consistent policy under the Biden administration. 

A review conducted by Homeland Security’s Inspector General’s Office found that the Border Patrol Office in San Diego did not have a set policy to deal with so-called Special Interest Aliens (SIAs), which are defined by the department as “a non-U.S. person who, based on an analysis of travel patterns, potentially poses a national security risk to the United States or its interests.” 

The finding from the DHS watchdog is only the latest evidence of significant deficiencies in the past administration’s handling of the southern border, especially when it came to proper vetting and tracking of immigrants. 

The inspector general found that despite other Border Patrol offices on the southern border successfully developing screening policies for SIAs, the San Diego office failed to do so. 

No agency-wide policy was in place

The watchdog squarely blamed the wider Customs and Border Protection agency for the failure because it had not promulgated a uniform policy for the screening of such aliens. 

“In July 2023, CBP’s Office of Field Operations (OFO) San Diego Field Office and the U.S. Border Patrol (Border Patrol) Yuma and El Centro sectors had a process to identify and provide additional screening of SIAs, yet San Diego sector did not,” the inspector general wrote. “This inconsistency occurred because CBP did not have an agency-wide policy stating whether to identify aliens from certain countries as SIAs,” the watchdog added. 

Because San Diego lacked a sufficient vetting process, the inspector general found “aliens from countries with links to terrorism entered at least one CBP region that did not provide additional screening.”

You can read the report below: 

File

OIG-25-29-Jul25-REDACTED.pdf

No country-specific screening published

The inspector general initiated its review to evaluate Customs and Border Protection’s screening of “Central Asian aliens” who entered the country via “smuggling networks” from June to October 2023, the report says. 

It is unclear what countries the watchdog is referring to because the specific characteristics of the aliens are redacted. However, several countries in Central Asia are home to terrorist activity, including Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. 

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Anti-Government Militia Targets Weather Radars: What To Know

An “anti-government militia” called Veterans on Patrol has declared that it is targeting weather radar installations in Oklahoma.

In an interview with News 9 on Tuesday, Michael Lewis Arthur Meyer, the founder of VOP, which the Southern Poverty Law Center describes as an anti-government militia, confirmed the group’s intentions. When asked whether they were targeting the radars, Meyer replied, “Absolutely.”

Newsweek contacted the SPLC and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) for comment on Friday via an online form and email, respectively, outside usual working hours.

Why It Matters

Following widespread floods that have devastated Texas in the past week, a number of conspiracy theories have swirled online around cloud seeding and weather manipulation.

Founded in 2015, Veterans on Patrol initially focused on vigilante activities along the U.S.-Mexico border but has since shifted toward conspiracy-driven campaigns, including those involving weather manipulation. The group’s rhetoric has grown more extreme in recent months, raising concerns among public safety officials.

Meyer’s recent admission follows the vandalism of News 9’s radar system in northeast Oklahoma City. Surveillance footage captured an individual tampering with electrical components, disabling power to the radar, damaging the generator and control panels, and knocking the system offline for several hours on Sunday.

CBS affiliate KWTV reported having footage of a man disabling the power supply to its NextGen Live radar. The station suggested the incident may be connected to rhetoric from VOP.

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Antifa Is A Domestic Terror Group. The Trump Admin Should Treat It Like One

Months of violent left-wing anti-ICE rhetoric achieved its apparently desired end state this week as an alleged Antifa cell conducted an attempted assassination of police officers outside the Praireland Detention Center, being used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement as a detention facility for illegal aliens.

On July 4, 11 black-garbed individuals, some equipped with body armor, ammunition, and firearms, conducted what the Department of Justice described as a “planned ambush.” Two of the attackers allegedly opened fire on ICE officers after their comrades initiated a disturbance to lure officers out of the building and into the line of fire by launching fireworks and spray painting anti-ICE slogans on nearby property. A police officer was shot in the neck but is expected to live. According to the criminal complaint filed by the Department of Justice, pamphlets on insurrectionary anarchism and propaganda materials, including a “Resist Fascism” flag, were recovered by law enforcement.

The equipment, tactics, political literature, and target selection are all consistent with Antifa, short for Anti-Fascist Action, a networked movement of anarcho-communist groups that use violence against political opponents.

For a decade now, I have been a student of this network, its origins, and ideology. As I told the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution in 2020, Antifa is the direct linear descendant of the violent communist urban guerrilla movements of the 1970s like the Weather Underground.

Like its predecessors, which also began with campus protests and street riots, Antifa has over the past several years evolved to the use of bombings, especially firebombings targeting police vehicles, pregnancy resource centers, and more recently Tesla dealerships. And to this escalation, we can now add the planned ambush of federal officers.

This was a totally foreseeable development. As a 2021 German Ministry of the Interior report noted, Antifa and related left extremists were demonstrating:

…an obvious shift away from the ‘mass militancy’ of demonstrations and towards violent acts by small groups acting covertly. Their violence has shifted to the sidelines of gatherings or is entirely independent of these events.

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Servicemen arrested in Canada over ‘terrorist’ plot

Canadian police have detained two active servicemen and two other individuals with links to the country’s military as part of an anti-terrorism case. The suspects allegedly sought to establish an “anti-government militia” and were in possession of a sizable arsenal of weapons.

In a press release on Tuesday, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) announced the arrest of four men, “including active members of the Canadian Armed Forces,” who are suspected of having plotted to “forcibly take possession of land in the Quebec City area.”

In a separate statement cited by the media, the Canadian Armed Forces confirmed that two of the suspects were active-duty corporals, another one was a former member of the military, and the fourth man previously served as a civilian instructor with the Royal Canadian Air Cadets.

According to the authorities, the group “took concrete actions to facilitate terrorist activity,” and participated in “military-style training.” During raids on the suspects’ homes in January 2024, arms caches were uncovered, containing a total of 83 firearms, including those prohibited under Canadian law, as well as ammunition, 16 explosive devices, and tactical equipment.

According to media reports, citing the police, the investigation was originally launched in 2023, with the cell having supposedly been active since 2021.

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EXPOSED: Trudeau government never vetted alleged terrorists behind Toronto plot

It took nearly a year, but thanks to Blacklock’s Reporter—who, as always, got the story first—we now know the full extent of just how badly the Trudeau Liberals bungled a major national security failure. According to a newly released briefing note, two Egyptian nationals accused of plotting a terrorist attack in Toronto were never properly screened by immigration officials.

Not before they entered the country. Not before they were handed work permits. And not even before one of them was given Canadian citizenship. No CSIS referral. No CBSA check. No comprehensive security screening whatsoever.

Let me walk you through this clown show.

Ahmed Eldidi Sr. landed in Toronto in 2018. Seven months later, he had a work permit in hand. In May 2024, the government granted him full citizenship. And just one month after that, authorities discovered that Eldidi had appeared in a 2015 ISIS torture video. That’s not a typo. That’s the actual timeline.

A man who starred in ISIS propaganda was handed a Canadian passport. The vetting process?

Just vibes. But the Public Safety Minister at the time, Trudeau’s babysitter literally and figuratively, Dominic LeBlanc, said it was an example of everything working perfectly.

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Muslim Immigrant Recruited For Jihad in Chicago

According to CBS News, A Chicago-based Muslim has been “convicted of using social media to recruit ISIS operatives and try to spread violent jihad and encourage people to carry out attacks on behalf of the terrorist group.”

Fortunately, President Trump has defeated ISIS. Unfortunately, Islamic radicalism still exists and Biden’s open border allowed potential jihadists into the country. Sadly, some in the West remain asleep at the wheel.

Per CBS:

Following a bench trial in federal court in Chicago, Ashraf Al Safoo, 41, was convicted of one count of conspiracy to transmit threats in interstate commerce, one count of conspiracy to intentionally access a protected computer without authorization, four counts of intentionally accessing a protected computer without authorization, and four counts of providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization.

Al Safoo was arrested in October 2018, following a raid at his home in the Budlong Woods neighborhood.

Federal prosecutors said he is a naturalized U.S. citizen who was born in Iraq, and moved to the U.S. in 2008.

He was accused of working with ISIS to various social media accounts to spread propaganda supporting violent jihad and recruit operatives to carry out terrorist attacks for the Islamic State.

This convicted jihadist was born in Iraq and was accused of working with ISIS to spread propaganda and recruit jihadis.

Among the evil he promoted were violent attacks during Christmas, as well as celebrations of terrorist attacks and mass shootings.

Al Safoo encouraged jihadis to “cause confusion and spread terror within the hearts of those who disbelieved.”

The ideology of Islamic jihadists remains a threat to Western Civilization. Fortunately, President Trump has made it harder for them to come into the country and cause harm in America, although there are likely already sleeper cells in America from Islamic countries who came in under Biden.

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Zohran Mamdani Admits He Hates Capitalism… Allied With Socialist Operative Linked To Marxist Terror Group

Americans were stunned last week when foreign-born, self-proclaimed socialist Zohran Mamdani used CNN as a platform to denounce capitalism—the very system that transformed this country from frontier towns into a global superpower. Capitalism has lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty, built a middle class, and fueled rapid technological innovation—outcomes impossible under socialist regimes, as evidenced by an imploding Europe adopting welfare-state models or failed communist states like Cuba. Yet Mamdani chose to vilify it on national television. His profoundly anti-American rhetoric didn’t emerge out of nowhere—one has to wonder whether it’s rooted in foreign influence or ideology imported from an adversary.

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Offshoot Of Syria’s Ruling HTS Claims Credit For Damascus Church Bombing

On Sunday, a massive suicide bomb attack tore through the important Greek Orthodox church Mar Elias in Damascus, killing 27 and wounding dozens more. The huge attack just added to the spate of sectarian violence across Syria, which undercuts the Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) government’s claim to be protecting religious minorities.

The HTS was quick to blame ISIS for the Mar Elias bombing, and on Monday announced the arrest of a number of ISIS associates who they claimed were involved, vowing to bring them to justice. Now that whole narrative seems in doubt.

ISIS never took credit for the Mar Elias bombing, which, since it was the biggest attack in Damascus in a very long time, would be an unusual oversight. Now, another group, Saraya Ansar al-Sunnah (SAAS), issued its own statement claiming credit for the attack.

SAAS, which was said to be formed in February, went on to say that the government’s claims of arresting people involved with the attack were “untrue, fabricated.” The group is being presented as an ISIS splinter group by some reports, but the reality is substantially different.

SAAS does indeed have some ISIS defectors within, according to reports, but it also has a substantial number of HTS defectors.

SAAS founder Abu Aisha al-Shami was an HTS member, and said he broke away and formed his own group because he perceived HTS as being too soft on Shi’ites and other “rejectionists.”

While HTS has undergone a massive reformation in its presentation in the media, the group was a renamed al-Qaeda affiliate that retains its deeply Salafist ideologies.

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They Should Have Been Called Martyrs: Syria’s Church Bombing and the Government’s Possible Involvement

On what should have been a peaceful Sunday morning of worship, 25 Syrian Christians were slaughtered for their faith.

As the faithful gathered for Divine Liturgy at Mar Elias Greek Orthodox Church in Dweila, outside Damascus, on June 22, 2025, at least three terrorists shattered the sanctity of the service with bullets and explosives.

The main attacker entered the packed church, opened fire on the 350 worshippers, and detonated his explosive vest at the entrance as they tried to force him out.

Meanwhile, at least one terrorist remained outside, firing at worshippers and into the stained-glass windows, while the other attempted to enter and detonate a grenade.

Two parishioners intervened and managed to wrest the device away before it exploded. Still, the blast tore through the church, destroying pews, shattering glass, and leaving blood-stained icons and scattered bodies in what should have been a sanctuary.

“People were praying safely under the eyes of God,” said Father Fadi Ghattas, who witnessed the carnage that left 25 dead and at least 63 wounded. Among the victims were children, innocent lives taken in a place meant to offer peace and protection.

This attack is the latest in a series of assaults on Christians, but it is the first known to be launched from inside a church since the Syrian conflict began in 201, marking a disturbing escalation in violence and a grave violation of holy spaces.

But the historical significance was even more damning.

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NSC advisors urged ‘ISIS’-style drone attacks on Russian rail, leaked files show

A coterie of British and American academics advising the US National Security Council explicitly urged Ukraine adopt the tactics of ISIS in a detailed proposal for “anti-rail drone operations,” according to leaked documents reviewed by The Grayzone.

The aggressive war plans recommended in the files eerily foreshadowed Ukraine’s Operation Spider Web, which consisted of a series of brazen drone attacks waged inside Russia between May 24 and June 1 – the eve of scheduled negotiations between Russia and Ukraine. A pair of Ukrainian bombings of Russian trains in Bryansk on May 31 and Kursk and the following day left seven dead, and injured more than 30 people, including two children.

The attacks on Russian rail infrastructure have continued since the launch of Operation Spiderweb, suggesting the British-born strategy has heavily influenced the thinking of Kiev’s increasingly desperate military.

The leaked plans reviewed by The Grayzone explore the use of “inexpensive drones” as “a low-cost means for disrupting Russian logistics,”  but also include blueprints for terror attacks composed by three “drone experts” before being passed to the Biden administration’s then-Director for Russia at the National Council, Col. Tim Wright.

Those experts belonged to a secret academic-intelligence cell called Project Alchemy, whose existence was first exposed by The Grayzone, and which was founded with a mission to “to keep Ukraine fighting” by imposing “strategic dilemmas, costs and frictions upon Russia.”

As previously reported here, Project Alchemy researchers called “to take a page from ISIS’ playbook,” presenting the jihadist group’s psychological operations as a model for Ukrainian attacks on Russian civilians. The Grayzone can now reveal that Alchemy’s team also urged US war planners to look to the Islamic State for inspiration in using commercial drones for attacks on Russian civilian targets.

One academic advising the Alchemy cell, Zachary Kallenborn of George Mason University, recommended Ukraine carry out “two-stage attacks like ISIS did frequently” on Russian-held railways, suggesting that Kiev first “break the track, and wait for the engineers to come to fix it, then use the drone to kill them.” In other words: double tap kamikaze drone strikes.

“Drones also could provide ISR [intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance] in finding and tracking trains to support larger actions,” with satellite imagery exploited for targeting purposes, Kallenborn added.

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