Turkey-born Oytun Ayse Mihalik had been studying and working in the United States since at least 2002, probably on an F-1 student visa initially to gain educational credentials from a Long Island university to practice as a pharmacist, and then likely on an H-1B skilled worker visa she obtained in July 2006. She married a U.S. citizen in 2007, qualifying her to eventually apply for a lawful permanent residence green card, which would not have been necessary for her as yet since she already had a sponsored work visa good for several years.
The couple settled in Orange County, Calif., Mihalik using her pharmacist credentials to work for a national chain of drug stores.
By the time Oytun Mihalik decided to apply for the green card, sometime in 2010, she was leaving her husband and was soundly radicalized as a supporter of violent jihad, apparently also following in the footsteps of an older U.S.-based brother who suddenly departed to Pakistan, court records show. At one point as she and her husband were breaking up, Mihalik wired money to an al-Qaeda terrorist in Pakistan with whom she began intensely communicating on social media channels about her brother. She sent the money understanding that it was for that terrorist to build a car bomb for attacks on U.S. troops, a later FBI and ICE-Homeland Security Investigations counterterrorism investigation found.
There would have been plenty of red flags for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services LPR application security screeners to find had they looked hard enough, perhaps interviewing family members and friends, in the months prior to issuing her the LPR green card, who could have reported her radicalization. USCIS granted her LPR in January 2011 despite obtainable evidence that she had been fully radicalized for several years.
For example, much later, her husband would report that by 2009, Mihalik had returned from a lengthy stay in Turkey with a newfound religious fervor and interest in securing her green card under false pretenses. By 2010, she was planning to follow her radicalized U.S.-based brother in joining the same terrorist group in Pakistan on “religious pilgrimage”.
USCIS missed another chance to learn, only a month or two before issuing the green card, in December 2010, of her radicalization and plans. Mihalik’s just-separated husband had gone to ICE Homeland Security Investigations agents with a tip about her radicalization, that she posed a terrorist threat to the homeland, and with an allegation of marriage fraud.
Her husband reported to the HSI agents that he believed Mihalik had married him under “false pretences” for the green card, according to the Los Angeles Times. He described a new religious fervor in his wife after the Turkey trip (in 2009, giving USCIS security screeners plentiful time to detect radicalization, perhaps through careful family interviews, before they issued the LPR status).
“I go, ‘Listen, did you marry … me for my citizenship and do you want to harm someone here.’ And she looked at me blank and she said, ‘If I have to kill people for Allah, I will,’” the husband reported, according to a transcript filed with court papers.
Instead, Mihalik was free to plot and support at least terrorist activity overseas aimed at the murder of western military personnel and civilians.
In her U.S.-based collaboration with the Pakistani terrorists, Mihalik used an alias and sent the last of three different wire transfers to Pakistan the same month she received her green card, in January 2011. Federal prosecutors later said she was fully engaged in supporting violent jihad and knew the money she sent would be used for a car bomb.
Just as the federal counterterrorism investigation triggered by her husband was taking off, Mihalik managed to get to Turkey in February 2011. Upon her August 2011 return, the FBI and HSI officers interviewed her at the airport about the wire transfers and her relationship with the terrorist operative. After another interview with agents later that August, Mihalik tried to leave the country using a one-way ticket to Turkey but was arrested on terrorism charges before she could board.
In 2012, Mihalik pleaded guilty to making false statements in a terrorism investigation, admitting she knew her donation would be used to prepare for and carry out attacks against U.S. military personnel and others overseas. In 2013, a federal judge sentenced her to five years in prison with orders that her green card be revoked and that she be deported to Turkey.