On Sunday, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Turner (R-Ohio) warned that the likelihood of a terrorist attack on American soil is at its “highest level,” amid reports of ISIS operatives being arrested in major U.S. cities.
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The likelihood of a terrorist attack occurring on American territory is currently at the “highest level,” according to House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Turner (R-Ohio), who made this statement on Sunday.
Mr. Turner was questioned about recent claims of arrests of people in the US who had connections to the terrorist organization ISIS during an interview with CBS News.
“What’s important about these reports and what we’re seeing, especially in conjunction with [FBI] Director [Christopher] Wray’s public statements, that we are at the highest level of a possible terrorist threat, that the administration’s policies have absolutely directly related to threats to Americans,” Mr. Turner said.
The FBI director’s public remarks during several congressional committee meetings over the last six months or so, he continued, make the threats “no longer hypothetical” and “no longer speculative” to CBS News.
“We have actual administration officials stepping forward and certainly our committee and our committee members have concurred on the intelligence that we’re seeing,“ Mr. Turner told the outlet. ”That as a result of the administration’s policies allowing people to cross the border unvetted, we have terrorists that are actively working with inside the United States that are a threat to Americans.”
His remarks were made in response to allegations that at least eight Tajikistani nationals with suspected ties to ISIS had been detained in several major cities, including New York and Los Angeles, according to anonymous U.S. officials. The Epoch Times has not been able to confirm those stories with an independent source.
On June 14, however, it was revealed that Turkey and the U.S. Department of State would impose penalties on three people who are affiliated with ISIS and part of a network that facilitates entry into the country.
On June 12, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told Fox News that he had written to Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) asking for a confidential briefing for all senators regarding the threats posed by ISIS.
“I have never been more worried than I am right now about an attack on our homeland” after the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, combined with what he described as lax border security,” Mr. Graham wrote on X. He posted on social media two days ago, saying that he had “been sounding the alarm for over two years” about the possibility of a terrorist strike in the US that would mirror the events of 9/11.
Mr. Wray testified before a Senate committee earlier this month that in the wake of the terrorist strikes in Israel on October 7, which marked the beginning of the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, the United States is today facing threats from foreign terrorists that “rise to a whole ‘nother level.”
The FBI director at the time pushed for more funding for the federal law enforcement agency, saying, “Looking back over my career in law enforcement, I’d be hard-pressed to think of a time when so many different threats to our public safety and national security were so elevated all at once, but that is the case as I sit here today.”
He also mentioned the terrorist incident that ISIS-K, or the Islamic State of Khorasan, claimed responsibility for, which occurred in a Moscow music hall and resulted in numerous fatalities.
Mr. Wray stated, “We’ve seen a rogue’s gallery of foreign terrorist organizations call for attacks against Americans and our allies.” He also stated that the possibility of a coordinated attack here in the United States, similar to the ISIS-K attack we witnessed at the Russia Concert Hall in March, is becoming more and more concerning.
In addition, Mr. Wray had raised alarms about potential human smuggling operations near the Mexican border and said that Mexico need to lend more assistance.
Recently, GreatGameIndia reported that according to The New York Times, U.S. officials revealed that U.S. Intelligence knew that ISIS-K was planning a terror attack on Moscow.
