Afghan national arrested in Virginia, accused of supporting ISIS

By Sarah Roderick-Fitch
The Center Square

An Afghan national accused of providing support to the Islamic State was arrested Wednesday in Virginia, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested Jaan Shah Safi in Waynesboro, Va., with DHS accusing the suspect of providing support to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria-Khorasan. In addition, he has been accused of providing weapons to his father, a commander of a militia group in Afghanistan.

The arrest comes one week after two National Guard members were shot blocks from the White House, leaving one guardsman dead and another fighting for his life. The suspected gunman, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, an Afghan national, was admitted to the U.S. in 2021 following the pullout of American forces in Afghanistan.

Like Lakanwal, Safi was also admitted under former President Joe Biden’s “Operation Allies Welcome.”

DHS claims Safi is an “illegal alien terrorist” who entered the country on Sept. 8, 2021, in Philadelphia, Pa., adding that he applied for Temporary Protected Status; however, his application was “terminated” after TPS was ended for Afghans.

The Center Square previously reported that the U.S. Department of Defense Inspector General released in January 2022, admitted thousands of Afghan evacuees who entered the U.S. following the American military evacuation in August 2021 were not properly vetted.

“[The DoD] found that Afghan evacuees were not vetted by the National Counter-Terrorism Center (NCTC) using al DoD data prior to arriving in CONUS,” the report said.

The report also noted, during an “analytic review, NGIC personnel identified Afghans with derogatory information in the DoD ABIS database who were believed to be in the United States.”

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem accused the Biden administration of bringing Safi into the country, underscoring the administration’s decision to allow nearly 200,000 “unvetted” Afghans into the U.S.

“The Biden administration created one of the worst national security crises in American history. Biden let into our country nearly 190,000 unvetted Afghan aliens – only determining who they were and their intentions when they were already on American soil. President Trump has been working every day since January 20 to clean up this unmitigated national security crisis,” Noem said in a statement.

Safi’s arrest marks the third Afghan national who entered the country under “Operation Allies Welcome” arrested in a week.

One day before the deadly attack in Washington, D.C., Mohammad Dawood Alokozay was arrested by the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, accused of making bomb threats in Fort Worth, Texas, after posting a video on TikTok, “indicating he was building a bomb.” He was charged with making “terroristic threats.”

In July, The Center Square asked border czar Tom Homan about the report and whether the Trump administration would investigate the individuals who had not been vetted.

Homan vowed the Trump administration would thoroughly vet Afghan refugees and would be doing things the “right way” by revisiting the vetting process.

“We’re going to re-vet them because we don’t think the last administration properly vetted them. … This administration will do things the right way, we’ll make sure everyone is vetted properly,” said Homan.

After last week’s shooting in Washington, D.C., President Donald Trump vowed to pause migration from certain countries, including Afghanistan.

Trump claimed “reverse migration” is the answer to years of mass migration and said he plans to “permanently pause migration from all third world countries to allow the U.S. system to fully recover.”

Trump also appeared to consider removing migrants who have become U.S. citizens. He said he will “remove anyone who is not a net asset to the United States, or is capable of loving our Country.”

He said the federal government will end all “benefits and subsidies to noncitizens, denaturalize migrants who undermine domestic tranquility, and deport and foreign nation who is a public charge, security risk, or non-compatible with Western Civilization.”