22-year-old Sudanese Mohmoud Amin Mohamed Elhassan, who had been living in Egypt with his brothers and sisters since 2009, arrived in the U.S. with siblings on June 1, 2012, thanks to lawful permanent residence petitions their mother sought on their behalf. Several years earlier, she had entered the United States on temporary humanitarian parole for medical treatment and somehow obtained permanent residence herself, which qualified her to seek family reunification with her children in the United States. In Egypt, Elhassan had been studying Arabic at Cairo’s Al-Azhar University.
But evidence from an FBI terrorism investigation later revealed a strong likelihood that Elhassan was already radicalized when USCIS approved his LPR application in 2012, a likely discoverable circumstance that vetting adjudicators at the American embassy in Cairo, Egypt, missed.
Much later, FBI investigators discovered, for instance, that almost immediately after his U.S. arrival Elhassan was visiting jihadist websites using a pseudonym, establishing connections with overseas jihadists, and openly expressing antagonism toward the United States, court records show. Screeners should have been able to discover - via social media postings or interviews with those around him - that Elhassan was espousing support for violent jihad, often in graphic terms, and esired to participate directly in attacks inside the United States or abroad with terrorist groups.
He opened a Facebook page embossed with an image of a lone stalking wolf and described himself as such. One of those he messaged was a radical Sudanese cleric, Sheikh al-Jazouly, who was internationally notorious for promoting violent jihad. To him, Elhassan expressed his desire to be a “sleeper cell” inside the United States.
One posting directed to Sheikh al-Jazouly in June 2014 read, in part, “Praise be to Allah here with you is a sleeper cell. Sheikh pray for us for success and rewards,” according to a sentencing memorandum from the prosecution. In one May 2015 posting, Elhassan stated that “Allah commanded us to fight -- and fighting is not throwing candies but necks being chopped off and stomachs being slashes [sic] and eyes poked!”
Postings like these drew FBI attention to Elhassan, who attended Northern Virginia Community College and worked intermittently as a cab driver and at Starbucks.
By 2015, an FBI investigation revealed that Elhassan was involved in much more than posting violent jihadist propaganda. He recruited and persuaded a U.S. citizen, Joseph Hassan Farrokh, to quit his job, leave his new wife, and join ISIS in Syria.
Elhassan arranged the trip and planned to follow himself so that they could “chop heads” there together. On January 15, 2016, the FBI arrested Farrokh in Richmond, Va., as he was about to board a flight to the Middle East. Elhassan had driven him to the airport. Investigators believed that if Elhassan had been unable to join Farrokh in Syria, he envisioned himself acting as a “lone wolf” or “sleeper cell.”
In October 2016, Elhassan pleaded guilty to materially supporting the ISIS terror organization and lying to the FBI. A judge sentenced him to 11 years in prison.