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?
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Protests in Los Angeles continued into Thursday night as tensions died down across the West Coast ahead of thousands of anti-Trump demonstrations planned for Saturday — the “No Kings Day” event is set to take place coast-to-coast amid civil unrest nationwide.
The Los Angeles Police Department posted to X as the 8 p.m. curfew went into effect Thursday, reporting that protesters were throwing “bricks, concrete and commercial grade fireworks.” The agency said less lethal munitions have been authorized and “may cause pain and discomfort.
The curfew covers an area where demonstrators have spent days protesting President Donald Trump’s immigration raids and the deployment of the California National Guard. A federal judge blocked his use of the guard late Thursday, but did not rule on the Marines also deployed there.
Gov. Gavin Newsom held a press conference in San Francisco shortly after the ruling, calling out Trump for deploying the guard without his consent. U.S. District Judge Charles R. Breyer’s preliminary injunction takes effect Friday, at which point Newsom will resume control of his National Guard.
“This is what he does. He creates a problem, and then he tries to be a hero in his own Marvel movie. He initiated those raids,” Newsom said of Trump’s actions. “He significantly increased the scale and scope of those raids. That’s why he wants the National Guard, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of guardsmen and women, now being dispersed everywhere.”
The Trump administration filed an intent to appeal Breyer’s ruling shortly after. In the meantime, the guard will go back to its regular duties on Friday instead of guarding the federal immigration in downtown Los Angeles, only one day before thousands of protests nationwide against Trump.
According to a press release, the LAPD arrested 71 people for failure to disperse Wednesday night into Thursday morning, and intends to post another update Friday morning. Seven others were also arrested for violating the curfew, and two for assaulting an officer with a deadly weapon.
Protesters filmed live streams on YouTube leading up to the curfew, reporting that some people were arrested and that they heard munitions being fired. Some demonstrators encouraged the group to disperse, adding that escalating things may be what the administration is waiting for.
The Los Angeles Department of Transportation posted to social media Thursday evening that it had cut services short for the day in response to the protests. LAPD vehicles were seen lining the streets, with officers ready to issue arrests in the event of further unrest or curfew violations.
In some live streams, officers were seen issuing arrests just 30 minutes after the 8 p.m. curfew, and in some instances, towing away vehicles. Another protest in Salt Lake City, Utah, kicked off at 6 p.m. on Thursday after the Party for Socialism & Liberation called for demonstrations there.
The Salt Lake Police Department told KSL News Radio that the demonstration of roughly 600 people was mostly peaceful, aside from a damaged Tesla. Officers broke up some fights and remained on scene as it died down around 8:30 p.m., Brian Will with KUTV 2 News reported.
“So we’re going to have an order on that pretty soon – we can’t do that to our farmers and leisure too, hotels, we’re going to have to use a lot of common sense on that.”
President Donald Trump said Thursday that changes are coming to his aggressive immigration policies after complaints from farmers and business owners.
“Our great Farmers and people in the Hotel and Leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long time workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace,” Trump wrote in a social media post Thursday morning. “In many cases the Criminals allowed into our Country by the VERY Stupid Biden Open Borders Policy are applying for those jobs. This is not good. We must protect our Farmers, but get the CRIMINALS OUT OF THE USA. Changes are coming!”
Later Thursday, Trump made it clear that businesses need workers.
“Our farmers are being hurt badly. They have very good workers – they’re not citizens, but they’ve turned out to be great. And we’re going to have to do something about that,” the president said.
He added: “We can’t take farmers and take all their people and send them back because they don’t have, maybe, what they’re supposed to have.”
Just how Trump may change his approach to immigration enforcement remains unclear, but he said he wants to help farmers and business owners.
“You go into a farm and you look and people, they’ve been there for 20 or 25 years and they work great and the owner of the farm loves them and you’re supposed to throw them out. You know what happens? They end up hiring the criminals that have come in, the murderers from prisons and everything else,” Trump said.
Trump said changes would be coming soon, but gave little detail on how policies could change.
“So we’re going to have an order on that pretty soon – we can’t do that to our farmers and leisure too, hotels, we’re going to have to use a lot of common sense on that.”
In a later post on Truth Social, Trump said illegal immigration had destroyed American institutions.
“Biden let 21 Million Unvetted, Illegal Aliens flood into the Country from some of the most dangerous and dysfunctional Nations on Earth — Many of them Rapists, Murderers, and Terrorists. This tsunami of Illegals has destroyed Americans’ Public Schools, Hospitals, Parks, Community Resources, and Living Conditions,” the president wrote. “They have stolen American Jobs, consumed BILLIONS OF DOLLARS in Free Welfare, and turned once idyllic Communities, like Springfield, Ohio, into Third World Nightmares.”
He added that deportations would continue: “I campaigned on, and received a Historic Mandate for, the largest Mass Deportation Program in American History. Polling shows overwhelming Public Support for getting the Illegals out, and that is exactly what we will do. As Commander-in-Chief, I will always protect and defend the Heroes of ICE and Border Patrol, whose work has already resulted in the Most Secure Border in American History. Anyone who assaults or attacks an ICE or Border Agent will do hard time in jail. Those who are here illegally should either self deport using the CBP Home App or, ICE will find you and remove you. Saving America is not negotiable!”
