Afghan refugee arrest in Election Day terror plot
Tawhedi plot tied to ISIS, "expected to be martyred."
In 2021, President Biden, the Department of Homeland Security, and media outlets assured the American people that refugees were vetted following the botched Afghan withdrawal.
Just this past June, the Biden-Harris administration celebrated "World Refugee Day," by touting how it had "rebuilt" the U.S. refugee admittance program.
This week, that vetting narrative took a hit.
On Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Justice unsealed a criminal complaint against 27-year-old Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi that a press release alleges he "conspired and attempted to provide material support to ISIS and obtained firearms and ammunition to conduct a violent attack on U.S. soil in the name of ISIS."
Tawhedi, who was living in Oklahoma City at the time, liquidated his family’s assets, planned to send his family overseas, and bought AK-47 assault rifles and ammunition in preparation for attacking polling and Election Day venues, per the unsealed complaint.
According to the complaint Tawhedi made the firearms purchases through undercover FBI agents who had been monitoring his activities.
Tawhedi's phone had ISIS propaganda, videos, and images related to committing Jihad in the U.S. in the name of ISIS. The phone also showed he was a member of an ISIS Telegram app group.
Per the complaint, in a post-arrest interview Tawhedi admitted to buying the weapons to carry out an Election Day attack with the intent of targeting large gatherings of people for which he "expected to be martyred."
Tawhedi was in the county on a Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) that he received when he was paroled into the United States on Sept. 9, 2021.
In addition to being a SIV, Tawhedi was apparently a security guard for the CIA in Afghanistan, according to the NY Post.
The Tawhedi case follows vetting concerns raised multiple times by members of Congress following the Afghan withdrawal, as well as issues raised in a September 2022 report by the Homeland Security Inspector General's Office (OIG).
The OIG report cited 79,000 Afghan refugees entering the country between July 21 through January of 2022 and outlined the paroling of the refugees by Customs and Border Protection, claiming they were "not fully vetted."
"We determined some information used to vet evacuees through U.S. Government databases, such as name, date of birth, identification number, and travel document data, was inaccurate, incomplete, or missing," the OIG report states.
The OIG report also said dozens of these refugees were a risk, and had "derogatory information" attached to them.
A second report by the OIG in May of this year confirmed a "fragmented" vetting process for Afghan refugees that presented a national security risk.
The vetting of these refugees has been a topic Sen. Chuck Grassley has followed quite closely. Read his July 1 press release for the full details and background.
More To The Story
Tawhedi is just one case.
In June, six Tajikistan nationals with suspected terror ties to ISIS were arrested in a coordinated ICE sting operation that took place in Los Angeles, New York and Philadelphia.
The men taken into custody had crossed the U.S. southern border and no federal agency is on record stating whether or not they were encountered by ICE and released into the U.S. interior.
According to CBS News, after the eight entered the country, the "FBI learned of the potential ties to the Islamic State."
"The FBI identified early-stage terrorist plotting, triggering their immediate arrests, in part, through a wiretap after the individuals had already been vetted by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, law enforcement sources confirmed to CBS News in June," CBS News reported.
The unasked question: How many more are being monitored?
Special Interest Aliens (SIAs) and SIVs have been a news item for several years and FBI Director Christopher Wray has warned Congress about SIVs multiple times.
In September, the House Homeland Subcommittee on Counterterrorism, Law Enforcement, and Intelligence held a hearing on SIVs and national security threats due to the border crisis.
In opening remarks, the Subcommittee's Chairman August Pfluger (R-TX) stated that under the Biden-Harris administration, the number of illegal aliens had "surpassed 10.1 million" and included "over 8.2 million" aliens encountered along the border with Mexico. He added there were an estimated 2 million "gotaways," which are individuals who dodged ICE or Border Patrol.
"The most glaring statistic that alarms me the most is the 382 individuals whose names appear on the terrorist watchlist were stopped trying to cross the U.S.-Mexico border illegally between ports of entry from FY2021 to FY2024 year to date," said Pfluger. "This is compared to the 11 individuals apprehended from FY2017 – FY2020."
Pfluger added, "If we know that nearly two million individuals are considered “gotaways,” how many of these individuals also appear on the terror watch list?"
On Oct. 3, the House Judiciary dropped a report outlining "more than 1.7 million special interest aliens" from countries that pose a national security risk have been encountered by border patrol officials under the Biden-Harris administration.
These include SIAs from Afghanistan, Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Nigeria, Syria, and Turkey.
The press release accompanying the report highlights the case of Mohammad Kharwin, who was on the terror watchlist, yet the Biden-Harris administration allowed into the United States — twice.
"According to media reports, Kharwin is an alleged member of Hezb-e-Islami, a group that was responsible for attacks in Afghanistan that killed at least nine American soldiers and civilians," the House Judiciary Committee's press release says. "Although a terrorist watchlist record was created for Kharwin in 2018, a name discrepancy in the record meant that Border Patrol agents released Kharwin into the country in 2023 despite suspecting he was on the terrorist watchlist."
In addition to SIAs and SIVs mentioned so far, it bears mentioning that the Biden-Harris administration has come under fire for the tens of thousands of Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans that have been deposited in small towns around the country.
The Biden-Harris Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans
(CHNV) asylum program has overwhelmed these small towns.
We've all heard about the issues in Springfield, Ohio, where 20,000 Haitians were sent. The town has since experienced a crisis in lack of available housing, hospital and K-12 school capacity, as well as a sharp increase in crime and car crashes.
This past week, the Republican Governors Association (RGA) issued a statement about the CHNV program.
The statement includes a letter sent to Biden by 25 governors, telling Biden how a "lack of coordination and sharing of information" about CHNV is harming their states and the immigrants placed in their states through the program.
The letter states that per the Department of Homeland Security, 530,000 Cubans were paroled into the country under the program as of the end of August of this year.
"Specifically, more than 111,000 Cubans; nearly 214,000 Haitians;
more than 96,000 Nicaraguans; and nearly 121,000 Venezuelans were vetted and authorized for travel, while more than 110,000 Cubans; more than 210,000 Haitians; nearly 93,000 Nicaraguans;
and nearly 117,000 Venezuelans arrived lawfully and were granted parole," the RGA letter to Biden states.
Let's step back from that paragraph for a second and do the math.
Combined, the number of people who were either vetted and authorized for travel or arrived and were granted parole from these four countries is approximately 1,072,000.
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