Op-ed: ISIS plot to assassinate George Bush reminds us the border crisis security threat is real

By Todd Bensman on February 12, 2024

A terrorist plot to smuggle an ISIS assassin team from Iraq across our southern border is wrapping up just in time to remind Americans the worst mass-migration crisis in US history comes with a high price: an elevated national-security threat.

The obscure federal prosecution of an Ohio Iraqi, Shihab Ahmed Shihab, for his plan to assassinate former President George W. Bush demonstrates better than anything that violent Islamic extremists have learned the US southern border has a wide-open back door.

So much so that President Biden’s own Justice Department prosecutors have just filed a memorandum in the concluding case arguing for a 15-year prison sentence and lifetime supervised release, with an aim far beyond Ohio and the United States.

Shihab pleaded guilty in December 2022 to one count of providing material support to terrorists, and prosecutors want jail time in the upper range.

“Such a lengthy sentence protects the public from Defendant and his lack of respect for the life of Americans,” wrote Jessica Knight, assistant US attorney for Ohio’s Southern District. . . .

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[Read the rest at the New York Post.]