From the Center for Immigration Studies

By Todd Bensman 

The New York Post and Fox News are reporting that Abdallahi crossed the U.S. Southwest border in March 2023, that San Diego-area Border Patrol under Washington, D.C., orders waved him in just like millions of other strangers, and that he should never have been in the country to shoot at Americans in the first place.

In a shooting that bears the hallmarks of a terror attack, 22-year-old Sidi Mohamed Abdallahi of Mauritania stands charged with opening fire on an identifiably orthodox Jewish man walking to synagogue in Chicago, severely wounding him while shouting “Allahu Akbar!” before engaging police in an extended gun-battle that landed the West African in a hospital facing a long prison term. The victim survived the attack.

For days afterward, a downplaying Chicago media could not bring itself to report Abdallahi’s immigration status as the national presidential election campaign debate was reaching its fevered apogee, centered on the public safety consequences of the historic mass migration border crisis in flooded American cities like Chicago.

But now, the New York Post and Fox News are reporting that Abdallahi crossed the U.S. Southwest border in March 2023, that San Diego-area Border Patrol under Washington, D.C., orders waved him in just like millions of other strangers, and that he should never have been in the country to shoot at Americans in the first place.

Jewish leaders in Chicago expressed outrage that Cook County’s progressive George Soros-backed State‘s Attorney Kim Foxx (who leaves office next year) has not charged Abdallahi yet with a state hate crime, albeit police had not been able to interview the alleged shooter as of this week — and determine a chargeable motive — because of his wounds.

But Chicago’s Jewish community, U.S. lawmakers with national security oversight authorities, the Donald Trump and Kamala Harris campaigns, and all the national media could be asking far more consequential questions that are essential to serve broader U.S. national interests.

Far More Important Questions

While it may be too early to determine whether this qualifies as an act of terrorism in violation of federal terrorism laws, is the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force even investigating the prospect that co-conspirators are still out there plotting next moves, that foreign actors back in Mauritania directed Abdallahi, and if federal terrorism charges are in the offing?

Local hate crime charges aside for just a minute, is President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice investigating anything at all about Abdallahi’s alleged shooting attack?

If the answer to these questions is a universal “no”, and the FBI is not all over one or more of these issues, lawmakers and the media are obliged to demand an answer from FBI Director Christopher Wray to this question: Why not?

If the answer is “yes”, then, whew — and great. But that’s just for starters.

National Security Vetting Failure and Just Pure Luck at the Land Borders

Congress, reporters, Jewish communities, and all Americans deserve to know exactly how the Border Patrol handled Abdallahi after his March 2023 illegal entry into California, starting with a timeline of how and when agents ran his name and biometrics through national security databases. These are questions for President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, as well as for DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas or the leaders of the U.S. Border Patrol.

A group of U.S.-bound Mauritanians in Costa Rica. June 2021 photo by Todd Bensman.

Reportedly, Abdallahi did not hit on any terrorism or criminal databases when Border Patrol detained him in San Diego Sector.

But was he ever detained and referred to the Border Patrol’s Tactical Terrorism Response Team or ICE intelligence officers for extended terrorism-related interviews? That’s what is supposed to happen with “special interest aliens”, who get assigned that tag if they hail from designated countries of terrorism concern like Mauritania. It’s doubtful that any interview was conducted, given the historic volumes of special interest aliens coming in from around the world during the Biden border crisis, Mauritanians among them in historically high volumes.

We must ask because high risk is suggested by Border Patrol encounters with a national record-breaking 400 border-crossers who hit on the FBI’s terrorism watch list in the more than three years of the Biden mass migration crisis, and that, while it’s good they were noticed and caught, far too many got accidentally released into America during the crush of humanity the administration’s policies caused.

One was an illegal border crosser from Senegal, in Abdallahi’s terrorist-inhabited neck of the woods, arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs in New York on a warrant from back home for “terroristic activities”.

According to material obtained by the Center for Immigration Studies through a Freedom of Information Act request, Border Patrol apprehended 18,260 Mauritanians illegally crossing the southern border from 2021 through December 2023.

ISIS, al-Qaeda, al-Murabitoun, and other violent Islamic extremist groups operate throughout the Sahel region of northwest Africa, which includes Mauritania, according to many credible sources about international terrorism. In May 2023, four jihadists convicted of terrorism crimes escaped  during a deadly prison break there.

Any abdication from past duty to conduct face-to-face interviews with Mauritanians occurs as the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. intelligence community began publicly warning, in both the 2024 and 2025 public Homeland Threat Assessments, of a heightened threat of border-crossing terrorism.

“Individuals with terrorism connections are interested in using established travel routes and perceived permissive environments to facilitate their access to the United States,” the DHS assessment for 2025, released on October 2, re-states. “Over the next year, we expect some individuals with terrorism ties … will continue their efforts to exploit migration flows and the complex border security environment to enter the United States.”

The First American Whose Luck Ran Out?

Americans have gotten lucky so far.

We know that earlier this year, the FBI rolled up eight Tajikistani border-crossers in a vast, multi-state counter-terrorism wiretap investigation that featured bomb-making talk but was pushed out of the news by choices to deport them rather than charge them with terrorism crimes that would have led to very public — and politically damaging to Democrats — court proceedings during the presidential campaign featuring criticism of the border crisis. In September, Canadian and U.S. counterterrorism agencies intercepted a Pakistani immigrant let into Canada as he attempted to cross south into New York with co-conspirators planning to massacre Jews at synagogue during the 2024 High Holy Days services.

In June 2024, a federal court prosecution in Sacramento convicted a Russian national from the Caucuses region of terrorism charges a few years after his illegal U.S.-Mexico border crossing. Mura Kurashev sent money to terrorists in Syria to buy battle motorcycles and guns, but the investigating FBI agent said he’d probably have conducted an attack inside the United States himself had he not been arrested in 2021.

In February 2024, the DOJ convicted an Iraqi asylum seeker of plotting to bring in over the southern border a team of assassins to murder former President George W. Bush.

This case in Chicago presents a special occasion that demands action from U.S. bastions of government accountability in national security matters who should get to work with this last question in mind:

Is the Jewish Chicago victim the first American whose luck finally ran out?