An accused Islamic State (ISIS) operative living in Columbus, Ohio, allegedly sought to smuggle terrorists through the United States-Mexico border in a plot to assassinate former President George W. Bush, an unsealed Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) search warrant application reveals.
The documents, reviewed by Forbes, seemingly detail widespread fraud across numerous aspects of the nation’s immigration system, from asylum claims to the record-breaking porous southern border under President Joe Biden’s direction.
According to the documents reviewed by Forbes, an accused ISIS operative had been plotting to carry out an assassination of Bush. The operative allegedly traveled to Dallas, Texas, to photograph and shoot video of Bush’s home and the George W. Bush Institute.
Most prominently, the operative wanted to use the nation’s porous southern border to smuggle ISIS terrorists into the U.S. interior, who would then help carry out the assassination plot, Forbes reports:
In November 2021, the suspect revealed to the FBI insider the plot to assassinate Bush and asked the confidential source if he knew how to “obtain replica or fraudulent police and/or FBI identifications and badges” to help carry out the killing, and whether it was possible to smuggle the plotters out of the country the same way they came in after their mission was complete, according to the warrant. The alleged smuggler said he also wanted to find and assassinate a former Iraqi general who helped Americans during the war and whom he believed was living under a fictitious identity in the U.S., investigators said. [Emphasis added]
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In one conversation with a confidential FBI source, the suspect said he was planning to get four Iraqi national males located in Iraq, Turkey, Egypt and Denmark into the U.S., according to the warrant. In a later conversation, he claimed that one of the four was “the secretary of an ISIS financial minister,” the FBI said. The alleged smuggler described the men as “former Baath Party members in Iraq who did not agree with the current Iraqi government and were political exiles,” the FBI said. He was planning to charge each $15,000 to be smuggled into America, the FBI said. The Baath Party was the political organization of Hussein, who was deposed in the 2003 U.S. invasion. [Emphasis added]
His plan, according to the warrant, was to get Mexican visitor visas for the ISIS operatives, using passport information he would send to the informant over WhatsApp, before getting them over the border. Meanwhile, he was communicating with a contact in Egypt over a fake Facebook profile, which carried a profile picture of two individual hands each holding a rose, designed to look romantic and “not suspicious,” according to the FBI’s account. In 2021, the FBI got a warrant to search that Facebook account, though it’s unclear what they obtained. [Emphasis added]
The accused ISIS operative has reportedly been living in Columbus since 2020 and has an asylum application pending with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) agency. Further details of how the operative arrived in the U.S. were not reported by Forbes.
The operative, the documents allege, had previously bragged about smuggling two Hezbollah terrorists into the U.S. for $100,000. Likewise, the operative claimed to have helped murder American citizens in Iraq from 2003 to 2006.
It is not clear whether the operative has been arrested by the FBI, according to Forbes, and no charges have been filed in the case.
The alleged assassination plot is only the latest case under Biden that illustrates severe weaknesses in the administration’s seemingly inability to properly screen, vet, and control immigration at the border and through refugee pipelines.
Following the U.S. Armed Forces’ withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021, Biden opened a refugee and parole pipeline for tens of thousands of Afghans to quickly be flown into American communities without being screened or interviewed in person beforehand.
As Breitbart News reported, a Department of Defense Inspector General report reveals that Biden’s agencies failed to properly vet Afghans arriving in the United States. As of November 2021, the report states that 50 Afghans already in the United States had been flagged for “significant security concerns.”
Most of the unvetted Afghans flagged for possible terrorism ties, the report states, have since disappeared into the nation’s interior. In one instance, the report noted that only three of 31 Afghans flagged months ago for security concerns could be located.
A recent Project Veritas report alleged that the Biden administration had resettled Afghans listed on the federal government’s “Terrorism Watch List” across American communities.
Since Biden took office in January 2021, 42 illegal aliens on the FBI Terrorist Watch List or No-Fly List have been apprehended at the southern border. In April 2021, two illegal aliens from Yemen arrived at the border. Both were on the Terrorism Watch List and the No-Fly List.
Former Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Commissioner Mark Morgan has questioned, to Breitbart News, about what exactly DHS has done with those accused of terrorism or having terrorism ties after arriving at the border.
“The real question we need to be asking this administration is, what did you do with the 23 people from the Terrorism Screening Database you took custody of?” Morgan said. “Their arrest would have triggered further investigation by the FBI and other law enforcement entities.”
“Did you release some or all?” he asked. “Did you remove some or all?”
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, during a congressional hearing in April, could not say definitively that none of those 42 illegal aliens on the FBI Terrorist Watch List or No-Fly List apprehended at the border had been released into the U.S. interior.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
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