ISIS in Your Backyard

Chattanooga. Paris. Garland, Texas. Copenhagen. New York City. Ottawa. Moore, Oklahoma. What do these wildly diverse places have in common? They’re all Western cities that have suffered terror attacks at the hands of ISIS supporters in the past year. Since the start of 2015 alone we have had dozens of American citizens arrested for plotting terror and supporting ISIS (this list from late May has already increased substantially). Practically every week comes a new round of homegrown jihadists arrested or some new plot broken up—or not broken up, as we saw most recently in Chattanooga. Now, if you’re more interested in what the Kardashians are up to than what’s going on in the world, I know this information might shock you. But if you’ve been watching this show over the past few months and have read my book “ISIS Exposed” you know that we have an epidemic in this country right now of U.S. citizens answering the call of ISIS–they’re going overseas to join the caliphate or just staying put and plotting attacks against the homeland. Folks, we’re up against a rapidly growing threat. And right now I want to give you some examples of the latest ISIS activity on U.S. soil. Bear in mind, all of these incidents happened in the span of one month: from July 30th to August 30th, 2015:

Virginia: 17-year-old Ali Shukri Amin was sentenced to over 11 years in prison for running pro-ISIS Twitter accounts.

Mississippi: 19-year-old Jaelyn Young and her 22-year-old her fiancé, Muhammad Dakhlalla, were arrested for allegedly planning to travel to Syria to join the Islamic State.

Florida: 23-year-old Harlem Suarez was arrested for allegedly plotting to detonate a bomb on a Florida beach and murder police inside their homes.

New Jersey: 20-year-old Nader Sadeh and associates were arrested for allegedly attempting to build a small army of ISIS terrorists in New Jersey and New York. We recently saw a jihadi in Spain arrested for the same kind of plan. Remember the carnage wrought by a similarly small army of terrorists in Mumbai, India back in November 2008?

Paris: Although the attempted terror attack by an ISIS supporter on a Paris-bound train on August 21st did not take place in the United States, three American citizens—including two U.S. service members—subdued the jihadi and foiled what would have undoubtedly been a horrific attack.

These cases are just the tip of the iceberg. FBI Director James Comey has said that there are currently investigations ongoing into ISIS-related activity in all 50 U.S. states. And we know that at least 200 U.S. citizens have traveled overseas to join ISIS. One day, if they don’t get killed waging jihad over there, these U.S. passport holders will return home. And then what happens? This is not alarmism, scare tactics or sensationalism: it’s reality. It’s also a heavy message and unsettling, I know. But for your kids and grandkids’ sake, I think you’d rather know than not know. Because if we don’t face it soon we are going to get burnt badly…we can’t say we weren’t warned.