ICE Arrests (Another) Afghan National Accused Of Supporting ISIS
Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times,
Federal authorities on Wednesday arrested an Afghan national on suspicion of providing support to the ISIS terrorist group, the third such arrest in a week, according to a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) statement.
Jaan Shah Safi was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in Waynesboro, Virginia. Safi is an “illegal alien terrorist who entered the U.S. on Sept. 8, 2021, in Philadelphia” under President Joe Biden’s Operation Allies Welcome program, the statement said.
He had applied for Temporary Protected Status, but his application was terminated once DHS Secretary Kristi Noem ended TPS for Afghans.
The TPS was terminated in May as Afghanistan no longer met the requirements for the designation, and “DHS records indicate that there are recipients who have been under investigation for fraud and threatening our public safety and national security,” Noem said at the time.
The DHS said that Safi was also found to provide weapons to his father, a commander of a militia group back in Afghanistan.
The Epoch Times could not ascertain whether Safi was given any legal representation.
This is the third arrest of a suspected Afghan terrorist in about a week.
The first case was that of Rahmanullah Lakanwal, who was arrested Nov. 26 on suspicion of shooting two National Guard members in Washington. One of the victims, Sarah Beckstrom, died afterward, and the other, Andrew Wolfe, remains in serious condition.
Lakanwal had worked with the CIA during the war in Afghanistan. Authorities charged him with first-degree murder and two counts of assault with intent to kill, among other charges.
Noem said in a media interview that authorities believe Lakanwal became radicalized after he arrived in the United States through connections in his community and state.
A day before the attack and in a separate incident, Mohammad Dawood Alokozay was arrested and charged with making bomb threats.
Alokozay had posted social media videos threatening to blow up a target in Fort Worth, Texas.
The three are among 190,000 Afghan nationals who were resettled in the United States as part of Operation Allies Welcome, later renamed Enduring Welcome.
Regarding Safi, Noem said, “This terrorist was arrested miles from our nation’s capital where our brave National Guard heroes ... were shot just days ago by another unvetted Afghan terrorist brought into our country.”
On Dec. 2, the Trump administration suspended the processing of immigration applications from 19 countries, including Afghanistan and Somalia, citing national security and public safety concerns.
The Epoch Times reached out to Afghan Support Network, a nonprofit that focuses on the welfare of Afghan refugees, for comment and did not receive a response by publication time.
Overhauling Vetting Process
When the United States withdrew from Afghanistan in August 2021, the Biden administration initiated the Operation Allies Welcome program to resettle thousands of Afghan nationals in the United States, including those who worked alongside U.S. authorities in the war-torn nation over the previous two decades.
“It’s the biggest national security failure in the history of the nation,” border czar Tom Homan said in a media interview on Sunday, noting that the DHS inspector general came out with a report at the time stating multiple failures in the vetting process.
“People need to understand, in these third world nations, they don’t have systems like we do. So a lot of these Afghans, who did get here to get better, they had no identification at all. Not a single travel document, not one piece of identification. And we’re going to count on the people that run Afghanistan, the Taliban, to provide us any information who the bad guys were or who the good guys are? Certainly not.”
Noem said in a Dec. 1 post on X that many Afghan nationals brought into the country were “military-aged men” who were not vetted for security clearance.
Homeland Security is currently overhauling the vetting process for aliens, requiring the country of origin to cross-reference biometric data and criminal history, screening social media accounts, and directing individuals to check in every year, Noem said.
According to the State Department’s travel advisory, Afghanistan’s security situation remains extremely unstable, with the highest critical-level threat to U.S. citizens.
All Afghanistan provinces are dangerous for travel, with targeted or random hostile acts perpetrated by the country’s citizens. “U.S. citizens and other foreign nationals are primary targets of terrorist organizations,“ warned the advisory.
