Database: National Security Vetting Failures

Iraq-born Hawazen Sameer Mothafar immigrated to the United States, probably during a refugee resettlement spike in 2009, and settled in the Portland, Ore., suburb of Troutdale. He became a lawful permanent resident on October 28, 2010, and filed an application for naturalized citizenship in May 2016, passing his naturalization exam in February 2018, according to a later civil lawsuit against the U.S. government.

Mothafar was awaiting final citizenship adjudication in November 2020 when federal prosecutors indicted and arrested him on terrorism charges related to at least five years of managing digital incitement propaganda publishing operations, extremist chat rooms, and email accounts for senior leaders of the ISIS terrorist organization. An FBI investigation, and apparently not national security vetting by USCIS on Mothafar's citizenship application, is what uncovered his support for ISIS. That support included his production of the pro-ISIS media site Al Dura'a al Sunni ("The Sunni Shield", that published 32 issues of the ISIS newspaper Al-Anfal that included articles with titles such as "Effective Stabbing Techniques" and "How Does a Detonator Work".

In their indictment, federal prosecutors alleged that FBI investigators traced Mothafar’s support to as early as 2014 and “no later than February 2015”, which would indicate that USCIS adjudicators were unaware of nearly three years of his illicit activity in support of ISIS, which included setting up Facebook pages for known foreign terrorist leaders. For the subsequent years until his arrest, when Mothafar allegedly edited and produced Al Anfal, he was receiving orders directly from the ISIS central media office, known as Diwan, the indictment states. The indictment accuses him of conducting research for ISIS on how to fly a drone carrying an object for another arrested official, and regularly encouraged terror attacks. Two government charges of conspiracy to materially support terrorism remained unadjudicated as of December 2022 as the Department of Justice investigation continued overseas.

Mothafar's illicit activity apparently came some years after he applied for refugee status and likely entered the United States in about 2009 and received Legal Permanent Residence in 2010. But although immigration-related security vetting for those benefits occurred prior to his ISIS activities, the vetting process for his May 2016 citizenship application apparently missed his intense, prominent social media activity for three years and about seven months after he began engaging in it, until he came to FBI attention in November 2019. Court filings indicate that the terrorism lead was generated during a November 25, 2019, interview in Iraq with captured ISIS propaganda operations leader Yasir al Anzi, a government motion to depose Al Anzi for Mothafar's trial indicates.

In that Iraqi prison interview, Al Anzi disclosed details about an "American volunteer" who, in 2014, was among “strong [ISIS] supporters” in the United States, who was in a wheelchair and went by the name Abu Ubayda al-Rifai, a name used by the wheelchair-bound Mothafar.

“The FBI has confirmed that Abu Ubayda al-Rifai is the defendant,” the government said in its motion to depose the Iraqi prisoner.

It is reasonable to judge, given the extent to which Mothafar was radicalized by 2014 and operating inside the U.S. that at least the earlier vetting for refugee status and a Legal Permanent Residency in 2009 or 2010 would have found little. 

But he was well involved by the time he filed a citizenship application in 2016 and vetting cleared him enough to take his citizenship exam in 2018. Mothafar was thus able to remain free to continue operating ISIS’s digital communications and email accounts until his November 2020 FBI arrest. It was the FBI investigation that ultimately held up the Mothafar application’s adjudication. (The FBI is able to request that USCIS delay adjudications on applicants who are investigative targets, under a policy known as the Controlled Application Review and Resolution Program.)

This timing indicates that security vetting for the citizenship application, which is supposed to be concluded within six months, failed by not delving into Mothafar's social media activity or deeply interviewing him or associates.

Oregon’s FBI Special Agent in Charge Renn Cannon was quoted as saying that Mothafar’s alleged online propaganda aimed to incite lone actor operators in the United States and was especially dangerous.

“When it comes to cases like this one,” Cannon stated, “a computer and keyboard can be powerful weapons against the enemies of the Islamic State.”

For example, a month after filing for citizenship, Mothafar is alleged to have shared 70 images of explosives and western cities, telling Sunni Shield members, “The images of destroyed infidel cities will be useful,” the indictment said. He continued inciting to violence online throughout 2019 and well into 2020, and continued supporting ISIS officials overseas until the day of his arrest. These are activities that authorities undoubtedly would have prevented with an arrest had they known of them.

Prosecution was pending as of January 2023.

Iraq-born Chasib Hafedh Saadoon Al Fawadi, his wife, and two minor sons applied for U.S. refugee status in Turkey and, after six months of ostensible security vetting, secured it right after a September 2015 personal interview with a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services officer in Istanbul, required as a reform following the 9/11 attacks. Al Fawadi claimed he couldn’t return to Iraq because the Iran-backed extremist Shiite militia group Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq (AAH) had tried to force him to participate in kidnappings.

The Al Fawadi family entered the United States in January 2016, settling initially in San Antonio, Texas, and later moving to Syracuse, N.Y., and, the requisite one year later for refugees, applied for lawful permanent resident green cards. But many months of prospective security vetting for his green card would not lead to revelations that Al Fawadi had served a virulently anti-American, Iran-backed paramilitary insurgent organization during the years when it mounted thousands of attacks on American soldiers in Iraq.

A 2020 FBI and ICE counterterrorism investigation later showed the 35-year-old Al Fawadi easily lied his way through both screenings despite his offering the clue that the AAH paramilitary militia had communicated with him about conducting violent criminal activity. The reality was that, since at least the age of 16, Al Fawadi had served AAH as an armed, trained, and uniformed insurgent right up until he applied for refugee status, and that he participated in the Iranian group’s extensive sabotage, kidnapping, political assassination, hijacking, and terrorism operations, according to court records and government press releases. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force, an entity designated by the United States as a terrorist organization, extensively funded and trained AAH, which claimed responsibility for 6,000 attacks against American and coalition forces since 2006, according to a State Department release announcing that AAH had been designated a terrorist group in 2020.

The FBI learned that Al Fawadi fought with and traveled far on behalf of AAH while it was attacking American troops. He fought in Syria on behalf of the government during the civil war with Sunni terrorist groups, spent time in Jordan, and traveled to Iran itself during his years with the group. During their investigation, the FBI found numerous photographs of Al Fawadi, dating to 2012 and 2013, with his AAH unit, wearing the AAH uniform, posing with a shoulder-fired rocket grenade launcher, receiving an award from the terrorist group’s leader Qais al-Khazali, manning a heavy machine gun in the bed of a pickup truck, and of him with his unit in front of the Damascus, Syria, international airport carrying a semi-automatic assault rifle over a shoulder, and in front of the Fatimah Masumeh Shrine in Qom, Iran.

How Al Fawadi was able to conceal all of this photographic evidence and personal history from USCIS refugee adjudicators in Turkey and later in the United States remains unclear. But undoubtedly his name would have been known to Iraqi or American intelligence services, which might have been detected with some checks. But even if Al Fawadi’s name was not known to allied intelligence services, his bogus claim that AAH members had communicated with him about kidnapping operations almost certainly should have triggered in-depth interviews of family and associates to turn up discrepancies in Al Fawadi’s proffered persecution narrative. And indeed, according to a government motion to keep Al Fawadi detained, federal prosecutors in New York pointed out that Al Fawadi told American screeners in Turkey that he had never traveled beyond Iraq and Turkey but slipped up a few years later in 2019 and told USCIS that he had traveled to Jordan, a significant discrepancy that should have triggered intense investigation, a denial of his LPR application, and deportation.

The court records do not indicate whether USCIS ever granted Al Fawadi’s lawful permanent resident green card, perhaps because of intervening domestic assault charges. But the records do make clear that security vetting by USCIS was not what uncovered his anti-American insurgency past. The FBI did not arrest him until October 2020 following a counterterrorism investigation.

“Based on discussions with an official from United States Citizenship and Immigration Services … it is government counsel’s understanding that Al Fawadi’s false statements about involvement in Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq and travel to Syria and Iran are alone sufficient for Al Fawadi’s application for lawful permanent resident status to be denied and for him to be deported from the United States, all without regard to the outcome of this criminal prosecution,” federal prosecutors wrote in their motion to detain.

Although its outcome remains unclear, the 2017-2019 processing of Al Fawadi’s LPR application raises further questions as to why it lingered for so long and allowed Al Fawadi to pose a threat to his wife and American citizens.

Less than a year after settling in San Antonio as refugees, local police on November 20, 2016, arrested Al Fawadi for committing an aggravated assault with a deadly weapon (a knife) against his wife, who was pregnant with their third child, a government memorandum recounted. She told police this act was part of a long pattern of physical abuse but later declined to press charges. In April 2017, his wife reported to local police in Syracuse that Al Fawadi had kidnapped her for several days, beat her and held a knife to her throat again. A few months later, Al Fawadi applied for his green card, which was not denied then or possibly ever despite its pending for two years.

Instead, USCIS reviewers seem to have found no reason to deny it even after an April 9, 2019, interview with Al Fawadi, providing the opportunity for him to continue living inside the United States – and to allegedly abuse his wife. Twenty days after that USCIS interview, on April 29, 2019, local police arrested Al Fawadi and charged him with the first-degree rape of his wife, after which he repeatedly violated court protection orders to not contact her. USCIS officers would interview Al Fawadi about his application six months later, showing the application was still not denied and that his paramilitary past remained undiscovered during those months of prospective vetting. Any government knowledge of his AAH service would remain buried for many more months, until, evidently, Al Fawadi’s estranged wife had him arrested for rape and probably tipped off investigators.

Prosecutors believed that allowing Al Fawadi to live inside the United States posed a violent threat to all Americans, mainly because his AAH group had publicly vowed revenge operations in the United States for President Donald Trump’s January 3, 2020, drone strike assassination of Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani in Iraq. Prosecutors wrote in their motion to detain that:

“In short, Al Fawadi was an active member of a paramilitary organization whose mission and activities posed a sufficient threat to have it designated by the State Department as a foreign terrorist organization. Although this designation is recent, it is based on activities that occurred when Al Fawadi was actively involved in the organization. When given an opportunity to acknowledge his participation and its nature, Al Fawadi instead responded with implausible falsehoods. It is reasonable to conclude from this evidence that Al Fawadi remains both unrepentant and committed to the violent objectives of this terrorist group.”

In September 2020, federal investigators arrested Al Fawadi on a three-count indictment alleging that he made false statements in the immigration applications. He was already in state custody on charges that he raped his wife, according to a government motion that Al Fawadi posed a flight risk and should be detained. In September 2021, Al Fawadi pleaded guilty to lying to USCIS on his refugee and LPR applications. Sentencing was pending as of November 2021, although the plea agreement provides for his deportation after his federal sentence and also after his New York rape case is adjudicated.

A 2019 federal indictment accused Yemeni student Gaafar Muhammed Ebrahim Al-Wazer in Pennsylvania of lying to the FBI about his experience fighting with the Iran-backed, anti-America Houthi rebels and that he harbored such fervent hatreds that his Facebook page wished "death to all Americans, especially Jews'' and vowed he would stay on the path of jihad.

Al-Wazer successfully covered up his involvement with the Houthi rebels for his 2014 interview with U.S. consular officers in Yemen, and in two interviews with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services agents for Temporary Protected Status in 2016 and in 2017, despite social media postings by then indicating Houthi rebel support and involvement. He received TPS status after both vetting opportunities and was not discovered until 2019, when a tipster provided federal agents with social media postings by Al-Wazer, who checked the “no” box or answered in the negative when asked if he had ever held membership in a militia, had training, or had sided with any armed faction in Yemen’s conflict.

“The defendant knew that this answer was false because he in fact did support one of the sides in the conflict in Yemen, as evidenced by his social media posts and communications,” a government sentencing memorandum stated.

During warfare in Saana, Yemen, involving an offensive by Houthi rebels in October 2014, Al-Wazer applied online for an F-1 nonimmigrant student visa to study English for nine months in Austin, Texas. He swore on the application that he had no militia experience and belonged to no particular tribe. He was granted approval on the same day as the application and entered the United States two months later. A year after entering, in late 2015, Al-Wazer applied to USCIS for Temporary Protected Status  due to the escalating civil war in Yemen. It, too, was almost summarily granted, as was a renewal in 2018.

From 2016 forward, the FBI was pursuing a terrorism investigation targeting Al-Wazer after he posted Facebook photos showing him as an armed member of the Houthi rebel insurgency. He was charged with lying to the immigration officers who had previously interviewed him. The criminal complaint describes falsehoods on his applications for the non-immigrant visa and for Temporary Protected Status. In March 2021, he waived prosecution by indictment and pleaded guilty to an Information that charged him with lying to federal agents.

Iraqi national Omar Ameen entered the United States on a refugee visa in 2014. He was living and working as an Uber driver in Sacramento in 2018, several years after his resettlement from the war zones of Iraq, when FBI agents arrested him in his apartment. The agents took him in on a rare extradition request by the Iraqi government that alleged that Ameen served as an ISIS commander in occupied northern Iraq and that on June 22, 2014, he murdered a police officer while leading his unit in Rawah, Iraq.

President Donald Trump’s administration heralded the Ameen case as an example of poor national security vetting for Iraqi refugees, arguing for a halt to the immigration program that brought in Ameen and thousands of other Iraqis. In April 2021, however, that specific Iraqi murder and extradition case fell apart when a California federal judge ruled that Ameen could not plausibly have murdered the Iraqi officer.

But the Ameen case still held up as an example of failed security vetting. In May 2021, President Joe Biden’s Department of Homeland Security (ICE) re-arrested Ameen for deportation based on other evidence that, while Ameen may not have murdered that particular police officer, nine witnesses told the FBI he still operated as an ISIS commander and committed other acts of terror from 2009 through 2014 that would have disqualified him from U.S. refugee status and U.S. entry.

Ameen obtained his refugee status in 2014 after presumed USCIS security vetting and entered the United States that November, settling in California. The security vetting apparently did not check Iraqi government reporting that Ameen had commanded an ISIS unit for at least five years, including the year in which he applied for U.S. refugee status.

In refusing to release Ameen, the Biden Department of Homeland Security cited intelligence that the Iraqi government provided – and also independent FBI interviews – alleging that Ameed was, at the time, a terrorist commander who had engaged in acts of terrorism, according to the Washington Post in July 2021. During a hearing on his further detention, former FBI special agent William Denton, who had initially interrogated Ameen about the police officer murder, said Ameen lied or misled officials during the refugee application process, which took place in Turkey, because he did not acknowledge his or his relatives’ alleged involvement in terrorism.

“We concluded that … Omar Ameed personally engaged in numerous acts of terrorism in and around the Rawah area, starting from 2009 up until the latest potentially in 2014,” Agent Denton said. “Mr. Ameen knew and had associations with a terrorist organization that he did not disclose.”

As of May 2022, the federal government added three new charges to Ameen's case, accusing him of lying about his father being shot to death, his brother being kidnapped by masked men and that he had no information about his brother after the purported kidnapping. Ameed was challenging the veracity of government witnesses and the Iraqi government, who told FBI investigators of his alleged involvements with ISIS. He has claimed he was never part of ISIS or involved in terrorist acts.

His attorneys claimed he was a “properly vetted and admitted” refugee. No new information was available about the case in the Spring of 2023.

Pakistani citizen Tashfeen Malik entered the United States in about May 2014 on a K-1 fiance visa to marry American citizen Syed Rizwan Farook. They were married in August 2014, then in December 2015 conducted an attack together that killed 14 people in San Bernardino, Calif. Both were eventually killed after a running gun battle with police.

Malik was born in Pakistan and moved with her family to Saudi Arabia when she was a child. State Department officials would have asked how Malik and Farook met; how they decided to marry; and some details about Farook, as a U.S. citizen. Malik would have needed to detail for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and State Department officials every country to which she had traveled over the last five years and if she was tied to terrorism or its ideology. But none of the checks found her prolific social media postings, which indicated an extreme hatred for the United States and support for violent jihadist acts.

According to a Los Angeles Times report:

It takes three to five months for United States Citizenship and Immigration Services to review and approve a petition, at which point the petition goes to the State Department. A U.S. Embassy or consulate conducts a medical exam, checks police records and interviews the foreign applicant, [immigration attorney Paul] Herzog said.

“It’s a very detailed petition,” said Los Angeles immigration attorney Roman P. Mosqueda. “If you’re getting married in a church, you have to show proof of getting a church date for the wedding, a date for the restaurant for the reception.... It’s very strict.”

The paper also quoted State Department spokesman Mark Toner during a news briefing after the attack that "Since 9/11, [any visa application will] involve multiple layers of vetting, with multiple agencies putting folks through various systems, where we watch individuals, what their affiliations are, whether they're on any kind of watch lists".

Malik reportedly passed three separate terrorism background checks for her fiance visa by the USCIS and then the State Department, which were responsible, the New York Times reported. But all of those missed her prolific “online zealotry” for jihad before she arrived in the United States, mainly because security screening routines, even for Pakistanis who grew up in Saudi Arabia, “do not routinely conduct social media searches during the visa process”, the newspaper reported.

And so that key evidence was missed some 15 years after the 9/11 hijackers, most of whom were citizens of Saudi Arabia, struck in New York and Washington, D.C.

“Had the authorities found the messages years ago, they might have kept her out of the country,” the Times reported. “But their recent discovery exposed a significant — and perhaps inevitable — shortcoming in how foreigners are screened when they enter the United States, particularly as people everywhere talk more and disclose more about themselves online.”

“Despite a tremendous electronic intelligence-gathering apparatus that captures phone calls and emails from around the world, it remains impossible to conduct an exhaustive investigation for each of the tens of millions of people who are cleared each year to come to this country to work, visit or live.” the article continued.

The 27-year-old Chinese national Ji Chaoqun arrived in Chicago on an F-1 student visa in 2013 to study electrical engineering at the Illinois Institute of Technology. He eventually enlisted in the U.S. Army Reserve under Military Accessions Vital to the National Interest (MAVNI), a program that allows certain nonimmigrants to enlist and gain immigrant status and eventual citizenship. But long before Chaoqun received the F-1 student visa, he was clandestinely feeding sensitive U.S. defense information to Chinese intelligence services, prosecutors allege in a 2018 indictment. This circumstance could have been uncovered in November 2016, during at least the second of three U.S. security vetting opportunities associated with Chaoqun’s applications to stay in the United States. Catching him at these points would have shaved up to two years from the time he was able to steal defense-related technology research.

State Department officers responsible for initial visa security vetting on the F-1 application in China would not be expected to uncover clandestine espionage activity with ordinary checks, since spies are trained to avoid detection, though it is possible checks with U.S. and allied counter-intelligence services might well have flagged Chaoqun as the Chinese agent he was.

Though such a discovery would qualify as a long shot, American authorities would have had a good chance to discover Chaoqun’s true mission when he asserted in a November 2016 Optional Practical Training (OPT) application – a post-university type of temporary work authorization – that he was going to work for a company that never actually hired him.

Vetting of OPT applications are not routine, though it could and arguably should happen for certain nationalities.

Had USCIS reviewers in Illinois completed basic verification checks on the OPT application, they likely would have discovered that he lied about having this job opportunity. That discovery would almost certainly have ended Chaoqun’s depredations inside the United States and may well also have unraveled his espionage mission earlier than it was, as well.

In 2018, federal authorities eventually did find out about the espionage and charged Chaoqun with violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which requires individuals working for foreign governments to register with the U.S. attorney general.

The investigation showed the Chinese agent worked undercover from at least August 28, 2013, to or about September 2018 providing information to Chinese intelligence such as background checks on eight American citizens, including U.S. defense contractors.

Because the 2016 OPT fraud initially went undiscovered, Chaoqun instead was free to join the U.S. Army Reserves under MAVNI.

The intensive MAVNI security vetting process, done by the Department of Defense, likewise missed the OPT fraud and his intelligence work, a second reasonable opportunity to discover Chaoqun’s national security depredations. The FBI caught on to him from other related investigations.

In September 2018, the FBI arrested Chaoqun and charged him with acting as an unregistered foreign agent, wire fraud, and making false statements to government agencies. In February 2023, a federal judge sentenced Chaoqun to 96 months in prison for conspiracy to defraud the United States, lying to federal officials, and impersonating agents of foreign governments. 

Bosnia-born Abdullah Ramo Pazara became a naturalized U.S. citizen on May 17, 2013 and, 11 days after swearing his oath of allegiance in St. Louis, Mo., departed America to join the jihad in Syria and was soon serving a mortal U.S. enemy, the Islamic State. Pazara became commander of an Islamic State tank battalion and later died in fighting.

Adjudicators at Missouri’s USCIS field office clearly had not noticed that Pazara, who worked as a long-haul truck driver, was already established as a radicalized jihadist before granting him citizenship, although a different, more robust kind of security vetting might easily have turned up evidence of this among friends, family, and perhaps a foreign government or even Pazara himself.

But aside from the dedication to violent anti-American jihad, a distant prior job in his country of origin likely would have derailed Pazara’s 2013 bid for U.S. citizenship had an earlier generation of government reviewers dug deep enough to learn of it: Back in Bosnia during the early 1990s, before Pazara converted to Islam, he served as a sniper with a rapacious Serbian militia during the former Yugoslavia’s brutal civil war, killing and ethnically cleansing Bosnian Muslims, according to media reports.

Those reviewing his refugee application during the pre-9/11 era might be forgiven for not discerning a deeply disqualifying personal history as an ethnic-cleansing Serb sniper in that war. But those conducting his background check in the supposedly more vigilant and technologically advanced post-9/11 era clearly also did not find it before granting citizenship, nor the jihadist commitment that had him departing 11 days after receiving it to join ISIS.

Evidence that came out later pegs Pazara’s radicalization to about 2011 when he began associating with Bosnia-born Nihad Rosic, also a truck driver whose family had been close friends to the Pazarro family back in Bosnia. Pazara met Nihad Rosic during a truck driving trip to Utica, N.Y., where Rosic lived. Afterward, the men developed a close bond and frequently contacted each other on social media. According to Rosic’s attorney, Rosic “turned a corner” in terms of his religiosity around 2011, the same time that Pazara also adopted radical religious beliefs.

One clue for citizenship application reviewers that something unusual was afoot was that Pazara had legally changed his name to “Abdullah” Ramo Pazara. The brochure for the naturalization ceremony he attended reflects the official name change.

The FBI learned of Pazara’s whereabouts as part of an investigation into six Bosnian immigrants in the United States, including Pazara’s friend Rosic, for allegedly sending money, rifle scopes, knives, military equipment, and other supplies to Pazara through intermediaries in Bosnia and Turkey. All were indicted in February 2015 on various terrorism charges (most had immigrated as refugees while still children many years earlier).

In March 2014, according to the indictment, the FBI found that Pazara recounted to an unnamed individual in the United States a mission in which his tank battalion took control of a large area, killed 11 opposing soldiers, and captured one prisoner. Pazara stated that he intended to slaughter the prisoner the next day. Video surfaced of Pazara’s battalion killing five soldiers, one by beheading.

In May 2014, Pazara uploaded a photo album of dead combatants from the Kurdish militias, who were fighting for a state within Syria and who had been killed fighting Pazara’s battalion. “These kafirs [nonbelievers] of the PKK [the Kurdistan Workers’ Party] … with Allah’s help, were killed during the last military action fighting against the Islamic State,” Pazara proclaimed online. “This is what is waiting for them in the world, these infidels in the trenches were killed one by one fleeing their homes.” One of the dead fighters was wearing a Tommy Hilfiger T-shirt, and Pazara quipped that, despite their designer apparel, “they didn’t have any footwear, Allahu Akbar.”

Pazara was killed in action in September 2014.

Somalia-born Abdirahman Sheik Mohamud was only two years old when he immigrated with his parents and siblings to the United States. But years later as a 20-year-old, in 2013, he had fully radicalized as a violent Islamic jihadist and came up with a plan to apply for U.S. citizenship for use in terrorism.

USCIS security screeners that year did not uncover his well-developed extremism or plans in time to reject his application or prevent him from using the fresh American passport he secured with his new citizenship to fight overseas in Syria and to then return with a plot to murder American citizens, for which he was eventually convicted.

According to court records and media accounts much later, Mohamud’s mother brought him and three siblings into the United States in August 1993. The family – including Mohamud and his brother, Abdifatah Aden (“Aden”) – settled in Columbus, Ohio, as lawful permanent residents.

By the time Mohamud decided to apply for citizenship in 2013, both he and Aden were deeply committed to jihad, a later FBI counterterrorism investigation discovered. The brother, Aden, after graduating from Ohio State University, left the United States in May 2013 to fight with the al-Nusra Front in Syria, an al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorist group. In September of that year, Mohamud pledged to join him but first wanted to secure U.S. citizenship and a passport to facilitate travel and return to conduct a terror attack.

USCIS adjudicators in Ohio quickly approved his citizenship. In February 2014, Mohamud took the oath of citizenship at a naturalization ceremony. A week later, in accordance with his terrorist planning, Mohamud applied for the passport, which he received in March 2014. He also set about coordinating his journey with Aden, pledging to bring his brother $1,000, a communications device for the battlefield, and an internet-accessing device, a government sentencing memorandum stated. In the months before approving Mohamud’s application, USCIS adjudicators of his 2013 application did not notice, if they ever checked, Mohamud’s social media postings such as one directed at his brother overseas that read, in part:  

“In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, Most Merciful. Salam be on you and your blessed companions Al Mujahideen (Arabic for “religious war fighters”) I’m proud of you. ... Allha (Arabic for “God”) loves the simple soldier so be a simple soldier, even if that means that no one knows who you are. All praise is to Allah who has allowed my Brother to fight in his cause. Abdifatah please know that you are fulfilling a glorious act that many of us have failed in, know that everytime you shoot your rifle, you are that much closer to Jannah (Arabic for “heaven” or “paradise”) so shoot and be true to Allah inn Shaa Allah I conclude with a simple piece of advise (sic), be Patient and be Humble, make dua (aninvocation) to Allah to allow me to join you in the high ranks as a Mujahid (Arabic for a person who wages jihad or war) inn Shaa Allah remain, steadfast and think of Allah 24/7. WaSalam love Abdirhaman.”

Mohamud left for Syria in April 2014, using a purposefully deceptive roundabout air and ground route, and went into combat training with the al-Nusra Front. His brother Aden died in fighting in June, probably before they could reunite. While in the combat zone, Mohamud began plotting a terror attack on U.S. soil, predicated on his return a few days after hearing of his brother’s combat death. He returned on June 8, 2014. 

Mohamud liked the idea of conducting an attack on a federal prison facility in the Fort Worth, Texas, area where the notorious terrorist operative Dr. Aafia Siddiqui was being held on an 86-year federal sentence for trying to kill American citizens. At the time, Siddiqui’s conviction and imprisonment had become a rallying point for al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups. The plan was to recruit several other terrorists, gather weapons, and kidnap and kill soldiers and Americans in uniform. At one point, he showed several potential recruits how to fire handguns at a shooting range.

The plot was serious. The FBI arrested Mohamud in November 2015 as he was about to board a flight from Columbus, Ohio, to the Dallas/Fort Worth airport. In January 2018, a judge sentenced Mohamud to 264 months in prison on a guilty plea to various terrorism charges.

Somalia-born Abdul Razak Ali Artan entered the United States with his mother and seven siblings in June 2014, about one year after applying for refugee status in a Pakistani refugee camp, where the family had been living for about seven years. He was about 18 years old when the family arrived in the United States and settled in Columbus, Ohio. During the period of 2013-June 2014, when the family was still in Pakistan and its refugee status application was under review, USCIS would have had ample time to conduct security vetting, interviews, and any necessary investigation.

Instead, some two-and-a-half years after the family’s arrival as refugees, on November 28, 2016, a campus police officer shot and killed Artan after Artan used a Honda Civic and a butcher knife to attack fellow students, injuring 11, on the Ohio State University campus.

FBI officials later decided Artan was motivated by the ideology of violent jihadism. Court records and reporting offer no timeline of precisely when Artan radicalized, but a reasonable presumption is that he was already radicalized in the Pakistani camp. Immediately following the attack, ISIS issued a statement describing Artan as a “soldier”. Facebook postings prior to the attack showed Artan was angry over the Burmese military government reprisals against militant Rohinga Muslims in October 2016, the month before Artan's attack. Investigators looked into a message posted on Facebook by Artan that contained inflammatory statements about being “sick and tired” of seeing Muslims killed and reaching a “boiling point”, a law enforcement source said.

“Stop the killing of the Muslims in Burma,” Artan said in the Facebook post, in which he also called Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S.-born radical cleric linked to al-Qaeda’s Yemen franchise, “a hero”.

Still, while it was unclear whether USCIS refugee application vetting in Pakistan might have discovered Artan’s radicalization in 2013-or 2014, a post-attack Senate Judiciary Committee investigation under the leadership of Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) concluded that security screeners in Pakistan did not properly vet Artan while he was overseas and under consideration for the refugee grant during 2013.

According to a letter to DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson summarizing the committee’s findings, Sen. Grassley wrote that Artan’s mother’s claims that she feared persecution from the Somali terrorist group al-Shabbab should have triggered deeper questioning of her older children, including Artan. Grassley wrote that his investigation found such questioning never happened, citing immigration records his committee obtained from a whistleblower.

“Further questioning could have eliminated the possibility that the asylees had dubious ties to the terrorist group and could have allowed for more robust vetting and data collection,” Grassley wrote. “However, although common in these cases, no additional questioning was conducted.”

In 2013, Ethiopian nationals Mohamed Abdirahman Osman and his wife, Zeinab Abdirahman Mohamad, applied for refugee status at the American embassy in Beijing, China, a city to which they had themselves smuggled from refugee centers in Kenya. In Beijing, the couple found purchase in telling the American embassy that the U.S.-designated terrorist group al-Shabaab had kidnapped the couple and held them hostage in an abandoned milk factory and that he lost his hands and suffered a ruined eye as a victim in an al-Shabaab terror attack. They swore to American adjudicators they were Somalis and were fleeing terrorism and war.

USCIS reviewers granted them refugee status and in February 2014 they settled in Tucson, Ariz. After the requisite one year of provisional residency for refugees, in 2015 they hewed to the same stories when they applied for their lawful permanent residence green cards, which they received after a second security vetting.

But an FBI investigation three years later discovered that almost no parts of the stories Mohamed and Zeinab told were true, including even the names they provided (Mustaf Adan Arale was Mohamed’s true name, for instance). According to an August 2018 indictment, the lies covered up that he was actually an Ethiopian who would have been in limited danger in his home country. It seems likely they chose Somalia as a nationality because, due to two decades of anarchy, that country would hold no records that could be checked whereas Ethiopia does.

Security reviewers missed far more than the basic lies about nationality and identity.

The FBI found that Mohamed was an operative of the U.S.-designated terrorist group al-Shabaab that, in their fake persecution stories, supposedly had attacked the couple and their families. In fact, Mohamed blew his hands off and wrecked vision in one eye by mishandling explosives for the terrorist group. Thanks to the fake identities and nationalities, screeners in Beijing and later in Arizona also missed that Mohamed’s brother was an active operative for the terrorist group; and that the couple’s friends and associates are also members of the terrorist group. Zeinab attested on federal papers and in apparently unchallenged USCIS interviews that her husband was someone else from a different country to help cover it all up.

Their story did not begin to unravel until a March 24, 2017, FBI search warrant on the couple’s home yielded certain unspecified "items of property", according to court records. Mohamed told the agents he was worried about the investigation and that he had lied to agents.

Perhaps had adjudicators in Beijing found out the identity and nationality lies they, too, would have secured the same admissions that FBI agents did later: that al-Shabaab had recruited Mohamed in his native Ethiopia and sent him to the Somali capital of Mogadishu to serve with other members of the terrorist group. They apparently kept Mohamed busy. In explaining an injury clearly caused by explosive ordinance, Mohamed told USCIS in Tucson that he had been injured in a June 2010 al-Shabaab attack at the Bakara Market in central Mogadishu. News reports he could easily have pulled up on the Internet showed there was such an attack in May 2010 that killed 45 civilians.

But Mohamed admitted to the FBI that he lost his hands in 2009 while handling explosives for al-Shabaab.

Indeed, the couple and their extended families all had been enmeshed with al-Shabaab, rather than fleeing the group's wrath as they falsely claimed to American embassy officials and later to U.S. immigration authorities as they applied for citizenship. He and Zeinab omitted the fact that he sent as much as $32,000 to family still active in al-Shabaab, including to a brother after the brother fled as a fugitive following his conviction, along with an uncle and aunt, for carrying out a deadly May 24, 2014, restaurant bombing in Djibouti.

In April 2020, Zeinab and Mohamed pleaded guilty to false swearing on their applications and lying to federal agents at the American embassy in China and, in 2015, on permanent residency applications in Arizona. Both were deported to Jordan.

In 2013, Ethiopian nationals Mohamed Abdirahman Osman and his wife, Zeinab Abdirahman Mohamad, applied for refugee status at the American embassy in Beijing, China, a city to which they had themselves smuggled from refugee centers in Kenya. In Beijing, the couple found purchase in telling the American embassy that the U.S.-designated terrorist group al-Shabaab had kidnapped the couple and held them hostage in an abandoned milk factory and that he lost his hands and suffered a ruined eye as a victim in an al-Shabaab terror attack. They swore to American adjudicators they were Somalis and were fleeing terrorism and war.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services reviewers granted them refugee status, and in February 2014 they settled in Tucson, Ariz. After the requisite one year of provisional residency for refugees, in 2015, they hewed to the same stories when they applied for their lawful permanent residence green cards, which they received after a second security vetting.

But an FBI investigation three years later discovered that almost no part of the stories Mohamed and Zeinab told was true, including even the names they provided (Mustaf Adan Arale was Mohamed’s true name, for instance). According to an August 2018 indictment: The lies covered up that he was actually an Ethiopian who would have been in limited danger in his home country. It seems likely they chose Somalia as a nationality because, due to two decades of anarchy, that country would hold no records that could be checked, whereas Ethiopia does.

Security reviewers missed far more than the basic lies about nationality and identity.

The FBI found that Mohamed was an actual operative of the U.S.-designated terrorist group al-Shabaab that, in their fake persecution stories, supposedly had attacked the couple and their families. In fact, Mohamed blew his hands off and wrecked vision in one eye by mishandling explosives for the terrorist group. Thanks to the fake identities and nationalities, screeners in Beijing and later in Arizona also missed that Mohamed’s brother was an active operative for the terrorist group; and that the couple’s friends and associates are also members of the terrorist group. Zeinab attested on federal papers and in apparently unchallenged USCIS interviews that her husband was someone else from a different country to help cover it all up.

Their story did not begin to unravel until a March 24, 2017, FBI search warrant on the couple’s home yielded certain unspecified "items of property", according to court records. Mohamed told the agents he was worried about the investigation and that he had lied to agents.

Perhaps had adjudicators in Beijing found out the identity and nationality lies, they too would have secured the same admissions that FBI agents did later: That al-Shabaab had recruited Mohamed in his native Ethiopia and sent him to the Somali capital of Mogadishu to serve with other members of the terrorist group. They apparently kept Mohamed busy. In explaining an injury clearly caused by explosive ordinance, Mohamed told USCIS in Tucson that he had been injured in a June 2010 al-Shabaab attack at the Bakara Market in central Mogadishu. News reports he could easily have pulled up on the Internet showed there was such an attack in May 2010 that killed 45 civilians.

But Mohamed admitted to the FBI that he lost his hands in 2009 while handling explosives for al-Shabaab.

Indeed, the couple and their extended families all had been enmeshed with al Shabaab, rather than fleeing the group's wrath as they falsely claimed to American embassy officials and later to U.S. immigration authorities when they applied for citizenship. He and Zeinab omitted the fact that he sent as much as $32,000 to family still active in al-Shabaab, including to a brother after the brother fled as a fugitive following his conviction, along with an uncle and aunt, for carrying out a deadly May 24, 2014, restaurant bombing in Djibouti.

In April 2020, Zeinab and Mohamed pleaded guilty to false swearing on their applications and lying to federal agents at the American embassy in China and, in 2015, on permanent residency applications in Arizona. Both were deported to Jordan.

In 2013, Chinese national and marine biologist Shuren Qin invested the requisite minimum of $500,000 to qualify for the EB-5 “immigrant investor program”, which admits foreign investors who are supposed to create U.S. jobs. In November 2014, with a State Department-approved EB-5 visa in hand, the 41-year-old entrepreneur entered the United States with his wife and two young children and settled in Wellesley, Mass., under the program’s conditional permanent residency provision and began running his nine-year-old China-based marine products company, LinkOcean Technologies, LTD.

ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations launched an undercover sting operation against Qin in April 2017 after receiving a tip from the U.S. Defense Security Service when he contacted an American manufacturer of undersea drones.

By June 2018, Qin was arrested and stood federally indicted for having used LinkOcean Technologies throughout 2015 and 2016 to fraudulently funnel export-controlled anti-submarine warfare equipment, such as the undersea drones and underwater listening devices that the U.S. Navy uses, to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), the Navy South China Sea Fleet Troop 91388, the PLA Naval Submarine Academy, and other Chinese research institutions that support the Chinese naval warfare branches.

Some of those end-users of the export-controlled equipment Qin sought to funnel included the National University of Defense Technology, the PLA University of Science and Technology, and the Northwestern Polytechnical University, all of which support the Chinese military’s development.

An analysis of court records shows that U.S. State Department EB-5 visa adjudicators in the Bureau of Consular Affairs based in China missed early and easily detectable opportunities to discover Qin’s connection to the Chinese military, which would have deepened a vetting investigation that almost certainly would have uncovered a long client list of Chinese government proxies. In turn, Qin would have been disqualified from receiving an EB-5 visa and damaging U.S. security for 29 months from the time he entered the United States in November 2014 through April 2017, when ICE investigators discovered what he was doing. The clue for State Department adjudicators in China was that LinkOcean Technologies’ public-facing website listed the Chinese military as one of its customers, court records show.

Qin did not remove that customer from his website until 2017, when Customs and Border Protection officers questioned him at an airport as he returned from China and he became aware that he was under investigation, court records show. 

The resulting national security damage was significant. Prosecutors said that from 2015 to 2016, Qin exported 78 hydrophones, devices that can be used to monitor sound underwater, to Northwestern Polytechnical University (NWPU).

Prosecutors said that because of national security risks, the U.S. Commerce Department requires an export license to be obtained to ship U.S. goods to NWPU, which works with the People’s Liberation Army to advance its military capabilities.

Prosecutors said in a sentencing memorandum that Qin’s efforts to illegally smuggle the equipment to Chinese military proxies, usually by elaborately concealing the end users to evade U.S. export and national security controls, “deliberately endangered U.S. national security”. “The national security risks associated with the defendant’s conduct are manifest. The defendant willfully ignored these risks — not to mention federal law — in order to further his business interests and satisfy a ‘VIP’ customer,” that being the Chinese navy.

Ultimately, Qin pleaded guilty in April 2021 to conspiring to violate U.S. export regulations on his purchases in 2015 and 2016 of dual-use equipment, such as the underwater listening devices that can be used to counter enemy submarines in potential conflict zones like the South China Sea, the U.S. government said in court documents. A judge sentenced him to two years in prison.

The 27-year-old Iraq-born Palestinian Aws Mohammed Younis Al-Jayab obtained refugee status and arrived in the U.S. in October 2012 with his family, who at the time had been living in Syria amid the civil war. The U.S. government granted his refugee status and entry into the United States.

But the vetting by USCIS that year somehow missed his decade-long stint as a “knowing and active” fighter, since the age of 16, for the U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization Ansar Al-Islam and other al-Qaeda affiliated terrorist groups in Iraq and Syria. The vetting also did not discover that he had continuously conducted executions and fought in large-scale battles with terrorist groups in Syria and Iraq right up to his departure to the United States as an ostensible refugee from those very groups.

According to court records from an FBI investigation and Department of Justice prosecution, Al-Jayab hailed from a tribe that was broadly enmeshed in terrorist group causes and operations inside Iraq. He was later recorded in potentially discoverable communications with his own father, a brother, other relatives, friends, and terrorist associates describing battles, favored weapons used, his personal involvement in the execution of victims by firearms, and participation in a high-profile bombing of the national security headquarters in Syria in the immediate years before receiving U.S. refugee status.

None of the court records from his prosecution or that of another Iraqi refugee who had resettled in Texas, Omar Al Hardan, also prosecuted for his support of Al Qaeda and ISIS, address how the USCIS vetting process missed Al-Jayab’s long, active involvement in regional terrorism groups, his wide associations with terrorist operatives, immediate relatives who were aware of his experience, and his social media postings.

But almost immediately upon his October 2012 arrival in the United States and while living in Wisconsin, Arizona, and California, Al-Jayab began plotting his return to fight with terrorist groups, communicating widely with operatives in the theater, posting his beliefs and intentions on social media, and telling his father, also granted refugee status and living in the United States, of his plans.

“Defendant’s intention was to return to Syria to fight, as indicated by what he told his father on November 17, 2012: ‘I will roam all over the world. I, the jihad is in my blood. ... I will attack the whole world including America and all that is in it. When I was in Syria, I told you, no one can stop me from my path,’” a government sentencing memorandum recounts,”The hell with money, and the hell with women, and the hell with America, and the hell with Obama. May God burn America! And the greatest tyrant, America, and I do not care about anything whatever it may be. The commandment of God is greater! ... I swear, I will bring out all of my anger on America.”

Thirteen months after receiving refugee status, in November 2013, he used temporary travel papers granted to refugees to fly back to the region on money sent to him by a network of his former terrorist comrades. For another year, he fought with the groups in the Aleppo region of Syria. He returned to the United States in January 2014. Not long after his return, Al-Jayab applied for an adjustment of status from refugee to lawful permanent resident, but security vetting for that turned out to be unnecessary.

By then, in about February 2014, an FBI counterterrorism investigation into his activities had begun. The bureau monitored and exploited the USCIS security vetting process that was part of the LPR application. Still, the FBI investigation took time during which Al-Jayab remained free inside the country.

Not until June 2015 -- nearly 18 months after his return from Syria and nearly four years after an initial USCIS refugee vetting failure allowed Al-Jayab into the country, did FBI agents finally interview him, a sentencing memorandum stated. He would not be arrested until January 2016, when a grand jury indicted him for lying on his 2014 LPR application about his travel to Syria and material support of foreign terrorist groups.

Because of initial failures to discover Al-Jayab’s terrorist group crimes during vetting for his 2012 refugee application, he remained free to attack inside the United States during all of these years and to illegally travel abroad to fight with terrorist groups despite a reasonable presumption that vetting agents could have learned that he was a combat-hardened and unrepentant terrorist who harbored a strong animus against the United States. In October 2019 a judge sentenced him to 60 months in prison.

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.

George Rafidi was a Ramallah-born Palestinian Arab living and running businesses in Cameroon County, Texas, just across from Mexico, until he got caught up in a federal money-laundering investigation. Rafidi's lies and obfuscations about past terrorism activity against Israelis apparently went unnoticed on a 2012 application for U.S. citizenship and on pre-2008 applications for asylum and lawful permanent residence. Rafidi’s prevarications about membership in the U.S.-designated terrorist group Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), including an Israeli arrest and prison term for violent activity, were discovered not during security vetting on his 2012 citizenship application, but through a federal money-laundering investigation years later, in 2018.

In 2019, Rafidi was convicted of covering up his PLFP activity and Israeli conviction on all of these applications dating to 2003, as well as for more recent citizenship-disqualifying criminal activities. For instance, ICE Homeland Security Investigations raided Rafidi's home and businesses, charging him and associates for allegedly operating illegal "eight-liner" slot machine casinos. Rafidi defeated national vetting systems three times on applications for asylum in 2000, lawful permanent residence in 2003, and U.S. citizenship in 2012, after the 9/11 attacks led to security vetting reforms. Due diligence checks at any point after 2003 and 2012 (or perhaps even prior to 2000) likely would have revealed Rafidi’s terrorist affiliations, particularly a check with the Israeli government intelligence services.

Federal court records alleged that Rafidi, after flying to the United States on a tourist visa in 2000 and overstaying it so that he could claim asylum, criminally failed to disclose that he served the PFLP from 1994-1996, and also that Israel in 1997 had convicted him of membership in an illegal group and for brokering a weapons purchase. Israel gave Rafidi an 18-month prison sentence, but freed him later in 1997 after only four months as part of a prisoner exchange.

The 2012 citizenship application was still pending when Rafidi came under investigation for operating illegal gambling machines and money-laundering in 2018, prompting an immigration officer to interview Rafidi in Cameron County, Texas. The FBI investigation led to immigration fraud charges and conviction but gained no assistance from immigration security vetting.