Jihadist Responsible for Mall of America Stabbing Spree Entered U.S. with Foreign Relatives

A jihadist who pleaded guilty to going on a stabbing spree at the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota entered the U.S. as a legal immigrant with foreign relatives.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) confirmed to Breitbart News in a statement that 20-year-old Mahad Abdiaziz Adbiraham entered the U.S. as a “derivative of a relative,” which is immigration lingo used to describe a foreign-born resident who came to the country either as the immediate child or spouse of a legal immigrant.

Adbiraham, according to KSTP, pleaded guilty last week to stabbing two men in a Macy’s dressing room at the Mall of America, an attack that the jihadist admitted in court was inspired by the Islamic State (ISIS).

In a statement to the courtroom, Adbiraham said the attack was a “call for jihad by the Chief of Believer, Abu-bakr Al-baghdadi, may Allah protect him, and by the Mujahiden of the Islamic State,” adding: “I understand that the two men I stabbed know and have explained the reason for my attack, and I am here reaffirming that it was indeed an act of Jihad in the way of Allah.”

The Mall of America jihadist also threatened Americans, saying in the statement that the country would not be considered safe until its “war with Islam” ended.

The jihadist attack by the foreign-born resident is just the last ISIS-inspired attack by a legal immigrant to the U.S.

Last year, Abdirahman Sheik Mohamud, 25, who entered the U.S. from Somalia and obtained citizenship, trained with a terrorist organization in Syria, plotting to return to the U.S. to carry out the attack, as Breitbart News reported.

Additionally, Ahmed Amin El-Mofty, a 51-year-old from Egypt, who allegedly targeted Pennsylvania police officers in December 2017 in a terrorist attack, as Breitbart News reported, entered the U.S. as a foreign relative of a naturalized citizen.

Accused suicide-bomber Akayed Ullah, a 27-year-old Bangladesh national, who allegedly attempted to detonate his bomb in New York City in an ISIS-inspired attack, also arrived in the U.S. as a foreign relative of a naturalized citizen.

In November 2017, Uzbek national 29-year-old Sayfullo Saipov allegedly murdered at least eight individuals in an ISIS-inspired attack in New York City. Saipov arrived in the U.S. in 2010 through the Diversity Visa Lottery, whereby 50,000 random foreign nationals are imported to the country every year through a lottery system.

Minnesota has the largest Somali population in the U.S., with the vast majority of those foreign nationals coming to the country through the refugee resettlement program. There are about 74,000 residents who speak Somali in Minnesota, with as many as 80,000 Somalis living in the state.