Five years after death of physical caliphate, ISIS threat to U.S. and terrorism influence endures

The arrest last week of an Afghan national on suspicion of plotting an election day attack in support of the Islamic State in the United States highlights the enduring threat of the terror group more than five years after its territorial defeat in Syria by U.S.-backed forces. 

According to charging documents filed against Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi, 27, federal authorities allege that the Afghan national who has been living in the United States since he arrived in the aftermath of the chaotic withdrawal plotted to commit an election day terrorist attack but was foiled by the FBI. 

In addition to terrorism-related charges, Tawhedi was charged with “attempting to provide material support and resources” to ISIS, which is a U.S.-designated terror organization. 

Tawhedi’s special immigration status, granted by the Department of Homeland Security in the wake of the Afghanistan withdrawal, caused a stir on Capitol Hill, but the suspect’s radicalization likely occurred after he entered the country senior officials reportedly said, raising concerns about the Islamic State’s reach and threat to the U.S. homeland. 

Tawhedi’s arrest is not an isolated warning sign. On the same day the terror suspect was detained and charged in the United States, the domestic intelligence chief of one of America’s closest allies warned the public that the renewed threat of ISIS is one of his top concerns. 

"One of Isis' most lethal branches"

“Today’s Islamic State is not the force it was a decade ago, but after a few years of being pinned well back, they’ve resumed their efforts to export terrorism,” British MI5 Director General Ken McCallum told a press conference in London last week. 

He said that the group’s effort to threaten the United Kingdom at home is what “concerns me most,” citing the recent deadly concert hall attack by ISIS-Khorasan in Moscow as a “brutal demonstration of its capability.”

ISIS-Khorasan, or ISIS-K, is a regional branch of the Islamic State focused in Afghanistan and Pakistan and described as the “one of ISIS’s most lethal branches” by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. 

That same terror group claimed responsibility for the Abbey Gate bombing in Kabul, Afghanistan targeting U.S. forces and Afghan civilians during the United States evacuation. That August 2021 suicide bombing in the midst of the chaotic withdrawal took the lives of 13 U.S. soldiers and 169 Afghan civilians on the perimeter of the Hamid Karzai International Airport. 

As threats from ISIS against the United States appear to be increasing according to Pentagon assessments, Congress is concerned that the Biden Administration could be doing more to protect Americans from the terror threat. 

Deficiencies in vetting

In a letter to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mark Green requested documents surrounding Tawhedi’s entry into the United States and raised concerns about the broader security situation. 

“These recent arrests raise serious concerns about the ongoing threat that ISIS and its fanatical supporters pose to U.S. national security, as well as the shortfall in the Biden-Harris administration’s screening and vetting capabilities,” Chairman Green wrote in his letter. 

Green has repeatedly warned the administration that its deficiencies in vetting of Afghan refugees following the withdrawal could pose a significant national security threat. Afghanistan was and remains a central battleground of ISIS-K, which opposes the Taliban in Afghanistan and seeks to impose a transnational province of ISIS’s global caliphate in the South Asian region. 

A DHS Inspector General report one year after the withdrawal found the agency “encountered obstacles to screen, vet, and inspect all Afghan evacuees arriving” in the United States as part of Operation Allies Refuge, implemented to provide U.S. allied Afghanis safe haven from the Taliban takeover of their country. 

The report found Customs and Border Protection agents did not always have access to the critical data to vet evacuees and that some data used by agents was “inaccurate, incomplete, or missing.” 

“As a result, DHS may have admitted or paroled individuals into the United States who pose a risk to national security and the safety of local communities,” the inspector general concluded. 

Failed open-border policies

Green also raised questions about the administration’s decision to deport several ISIS-tied illegal immigrants intercepted inside the country given that he believes those suspects may be able to easily reenter the way they came in: across the southern border. 

“The Committee also remains concerned that due to the Biden-Harris administration’s failed open-border policies, these individuals with ties to ISIS and other foreign terrorist organizations can easily just reenter the United States again and again,” Green wrote. 

Last week federal authorities deported a portion of the eight ISIS terror suspects previously identified by the Justice Department as organizers of a an active terror plot. CBS News reported that three of the suspects have been deported to Tajikistan and Russia and five additional suspects are expected to be soon deported.

The group of terror suspects crossed the southern border, some illegally and others employing the Biden Administration’s CBP One phone app, the New York Post reported. According to a source that spoke to the Post, several of the Tajikistan nationals are still being hunted by federal officials after the eight were detained in New York City, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles. 

DHS did not respond to a request for comment from Just the News about the deportations or whether the agency has a plan in place for preventing the migrants from attempting to reenter at the border. 

Earlier this year, FBI Director Christopher Wray said he was concerned about a “coordinated attack” on the United States in the aftermath of the Moscow concert hall attack. “Our most immediate concern has been that individuals or small groups will draw twisted inspiration from the events in the Middle East to carry out attacks here at home,” Wray told the a House Appropriations subcommittee in April. 

Green believes this concerns have not dissipated, but rather are reignited by recent arrests and warnings. “The Committee also remains concerned about the threat of a ‘lone wolf’ actor or multiple actors attempting to commit a terrorist attack on U.S. soil,” Green concluded.

“While the Committee commends law enforcement efforts to foil this alleged ISIS-inspired terrorist plot on Election Day, the Committee finds it unacceptable that the Biden-Harris administration is precariously failing to take measures to safeguard U.S. national security by allowing alleged terrorists into the interior of the United States to plot terrorist attacks.”