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Crime

Mystery Terrorist: The Unknown Life and Violent Times of Illegal Border-Crosser Sidi Mohammed Abdallahi

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The most recent burial in a cost-free Muslim cemetery on the outskirts of Chicago in late December, possibly the burial site of Abdallahi, although the marker is the only one numbered rather than identified by name. Photo by Todd Bensman.

From the Center for Immigration Studies

First Blood, Part 2

By Todd Bensman 

(Part 2 of 3; Read Part 1Part 3.)

Abdallahi booking photo

 CHICAGO, Illinois – If ever there was a magic moment for Americans to learn why Mauritanian national Sidi Mohammad Abdallahi rampaged through an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood firing a semi-automatic handgun at Jews and police, trying to rack up a body count, it was after he’d been dead a week on December 6, 2024.

“Prayers will be held over the body of the deceased” at 8:45 pm, read a post on the Chicago Mauritanian Community’s Facebook page. “Notice: Everyone is requested to come and pray for our bereaved. It is our right. Let us not forget also the virtue of a funeral, its follow-up and rewards.”

The funeral post drew several responses from the account’s 537 followers and drew one re-share.

“May God have mercy on him,” wrote Vadel Wel Belli, an active group member.

The 22-year-old Abdallahi, critically wounded then arrested by police, had hanged himself the week before while in the Cook County Jail while awaiting his eventual trial on state terrorism and other charges for conducting an October 26 shooting melee described at length in Part 1 of this series. (See First Blood: Anatomy of a Border-Crosser’s Chicago Terror Attack).

The pre-trial jailhouse suicide had made perfunctory news headlines, but any reporter who would have attended the Chicago Mauritanian Community’s publicly advertised “prayers…over the body of the deceased” and presumed burial of Abdallahi on Friday, December 6, could have potentially interviewed the people who knew him most intimately. A Facebook page that matches Abdallahi’s full name, devoid of entries other than a photo of a car, show five followers, among them some who follow the Chicago Mauritanian Community. But no reporters bothered to show up, missing what turned out to be a consequential opportunity to learn about Abdallahi’s violent path from the Mexican border to the West Rogers Park neighborhood, which he shot up during his 20-minute attack.

A Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) trip to Chicago two weeks after the funeral service, to learn what the cancelled trial might have revealed about the ground-breaking first charged terrorist attack by a border-crossing illegal immigrant, discovered a window onto Abdallahi’s world in Chicago.

A Pakistani man who parks several black hearses at what turned out to be a large Albanian mosque at the provided Facebook address, one of which displays a “Muslim Funeral Service” sign in a window, told CIS that Abdallahi had “relatives” in the area, the first known reference to that. They were the ones who accepted the body from the county Medical Examiner’s office and paid for the funeral service, he said.

The Pakistani funeral director refused to say anything more without the family’s permission, which he offered to secure for CIS. They never responded.

The Chicago Mauritanian community’s self-described leaders, many of them recent immigrants like Abdallahi, declined CIS interview requests to talk about Abdallahi, through an interlocutor who works closely with them.

And so, even the most basic information of homeland security value about Abdallahi and his path to violence, essential in helping authorities uncover violent plans by other illegal border-crossers from countries of terrorism concern like Mauritania, remains out of reach. It has already been reported that his phone and computer searches showed he was steeped in jihadist and pro-Hamas propaganda – and wore to his attack a green workman’s safety vest currently popular among pro-Hamas demonstrators. But that’s a small morsel.

A hearse at the address advertised for Sidi Mohammed Abdallahi’s December 6 funeral service.

One of the first of many rounds Abdallahi fired during the 20-minute spree went through a Jewish man’s back as he walked to synagogue and more toward police until officers critically wounded him. That white-knuckled morning of terror left Chicago’s Orthodox Jewish community deeply shaken and, with no trial coming, feeling an unrequited ache to know how this young foreign gunman was ever able to cross the U.S. southern border and attack their people with a semi-automatic pistol while screaming “Allahu Akbar.”

They still didn’t know two months later – and won’t ever, at least not from any trial.

“When they said ‘terrorism,’ it was just kind of shocking. It made us wonder if there’s much more to the story, that this guy wasn’t just some guy,” Abdallahi’s Jewish victim, who has fully recovered, told CIS in late December. “Like, what are we missing from this story? No one has given us any details or answers or anything.” (The victim spoke to CIS, in his first and only interview, on condition that his identity not be disclosed for fear of future targeting.)

“The safety piece is what’s scary,” he continued. “Like was he alone in this or was there somebody who coerced him to this? And if that’s the case, then okay, where are the rest of them and are they going to start infiltrating our neighborhood in some way? We still don’t have that answer, and that’s the scary thing.”

Many other questions hover over the incident unanswered but needed to enhance national security.

For instance, did U.S. Border Patrol and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) miss opportunities to detect his extremist ideology at the border or later on?

When Abdallahi crossed and passed a database check, was he ever detained and referred to the Border Patrol’s Tactical Terrorism Response Team or to ICE intelligence officers for extended terrorism-related interviews? That is supposed to happen with “special interest aliens,” who get assigned that tag if they hail from designated countries of terrorism concern like Mauritania.

According to material obtained by CIS through a Freedom of Information Act request, Border Patrol apprehended 18,260 Mauritanians (and hundreds of thousands of other special-interest aliens) who have illegally crossed the U.S. southern border from 2021 through December 2023, probably far too many for tedious direct interviews that can turn up signs of extremist beliefs.

If mistakes with Abdallahi remain unexplored, how then would the border agencies learn to interdict other potentially dangerous border-crossers already in the United States for a year or two?

Are co-conspirators who helped him or failed to report his plan still free or ruled out?

How exactly did Abdallahi, an illegal immigrant barred from obtaining a firearm in gun-restricted Chicago, get his hands on one and who might be held responsible?

What Is Known

ICE officials have confirmed that Abdallahi crossed the U.S. southern Border from Tijuana to San Diego on March 29, 2023. After a criminal and national security database check returned nothing derogatory, U.S. Border Patrol freed him on his own recognizance just as they have millions of other illegal entrants under orders from the Biden-Harris Department of Homeland Security.

Most often, those millions released were given dates to voluntarily report to ICE offices in their chosen destination city to file asylum claims or seek other forms of relief from deportation.

It’s unknown whether Abdallahi reported to ICE in Chicago or what the office knew of him. CIS has filed a Freedom of Information Act request to find out what ICE knew of him and when, if anything, but he may have obtained work authorization because Cook County prosecutors said at his detention hearing  that he worked at a Chicago Amazon warehouse, and he had possession of a car where police found his phone after the shootout.

One of many obvious signs posted inside Midwest Sporting Goods gun store and range warns customers that they must have a state permit to touch a weapon. Photo by Todd Bensman.

The Gun Mystery

The phone contained more than 100 “antisemitic and pro-Hamas” images and videos, the prosecutor said. He’d used the phone to map local synagogues, including one just a couple of blocks from where he attacked the Jewish man. And his Google search history included a gun store in the suburb of Lyons.

The Jewish victim he shot said he dearly wants to know how his assailant got the gun.

So CIS visited the Lyons gun store and shooting range that came up in one of Abdallahi’s searches, Midwest Sporting Goods, and pretty much ruled out that he obtained the firearm there. The store’s manager said detectives came around too and found that there was no record that Abdallahi held a state-required FOID card permit required to legally buy, sell, or fire any handgun in Illinois – a rule the gun store rigorously enforces to stay out of trouble. There also was no evidence that Abdallahi might have come in with a friend who had the permit, she said.

It could have been stolen and sold on the black market. Whatever the handgun’s history, the manager noted, police probably know a lot about it since they recovered it after the attack.

Home Life and Times

At least for a time, Abdallahi lived in a crowded but somewhat renovated South Chicago flop house above a taco shop shared by five other young Mauritanian immigrants who also crossed the southern border.

The apartment in a dilapidated older neighborhood pockmarked by abandoned condemned buildings consisted of three disheveled bedrooms with two men in each, a kitchen and toilet facilities. A prayer rug was visible on the floor in one room. No one seemed interested in replacing the expired batteries on two chirping smoke detectors.

Two of Abdallahi’s former roommates confirmed that Abdallahi had lived there for a time and had relatives in the area, including a “cousin” who spoke good English but that they hardly knew Abdallahi well enough to meaningfully comment. CIS could not locate the relative.

“Yeah, he lived here. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah,” one young Mauritanian named Abdullah, who crossed the southern border in 2023, said in broken English. Police interviewed him a couple of times. “But I’m not talking to this guy. I not see this guy. I don’t know about this.”

The apartment Abdallahi shared with other illegal Mauritanian border crossers in South Chicago. Photo by Todd Bensman.

But Abdullah was definitive in saying that Abdallahi had never served in the Mauritanian military and also was angry about Israel’s war on Gaza as many in the community are.

“Too much Palestine! America give you everything to help you. Why do you have to go catch somebody outside of Palestine?” the young man opined.

A second Facebook page registered to Abdallahi’s unique name, recently taken down, showed that he had about 30 followers, most of them in Mauritania. Interestingly, Abdallahi followed the California Highway Patrol page in El Cajon, which is near the Mexican border.

Meanwhile, no one and no government agency seem interested in anything but moving on.

The FBI Closes Its Case; Other Agencies Fall Silent

Basic information to enhance public safety may remain unknown even to the most relevant federal law enforcement agency that investigates all suspected U.S. terrorism offenses, the FBI.

In this one rare instance, the FBI appears to have substantially ceded its role as primary investigator to the Chicago Police Department and Cook County Attorney’s office, which are arguably far less equipped for complex international and national terrorism cases even though they eventually lodged a state terrorism charge.

Two days after his attack, the only peep from the FBI came in a written statement that it would work “diligently with local, state, and federal partners to provide critical resources and assistance as we learn more.” The bureau disappeared after that, steering clear of the few press conferences that local authorities staged.

In response to a more recent inquiry by CIS, the FBI now says it has closed whatever support case it had opened, since the suspect is dead, and declined CIS interview requests to rule out or in co-conspirators or foreign direction or anything else that is important to know.

“It is common for investigations to be closed in conjunction with the US Attorney’s Office if a subject dies prior to the conclusion of an investigation,” the FBI’s Chicago Public Affairs Team wrote to CIS in a January 3 email.

CIS has filed a federal Freedom of Information request to the FBI for more information and is prepared to litigate it if necessary.

The FBI’s tack here is highly unusual in the annals of obvious U.S. terror attacks, regardless of body count.

Contrast this lack of curiosity with the recent New Years Day vehicle ramming attack in New Orleans, which killed 14 plus the driver, and the so-called “cybertruck” bombing in Las Vegas, during which nobody died but the driver. Even before a full news cycle passed, news media brimmed with exhaustive reports about the life and times of a U.S.-born terrorist who carried out the ISIS-inspired New Orleans attack. One reporter even took social media followers on a video tour inside the dead terrorist’s FBI-searched Houston residence, before his victim’s bodies were even cleared from the bloody scene.

Even with Abdallahi dead and the trial cancelled, both the Chicago Police Department and the Cook County prosecutor declined CIS interview requests for interviews about the case. CIS has filed numerous FOIA requests.

Short of congressional or Trump White House intervention on behalf of transparency, the FOIAs may hold the last hope that authorities can improve processes and interdict other illegal aliens raised in countries where extremist ideologies are common and who might be predisposed to also plan mass casualty violence.

Part 3: Solutions

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Murder of US Border Patrol agent linked to bizarre ‘antifascist trans terror cult’

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From LifeSiteNews

By Doug Mainwaring

The bizarre behavior and extreme violence and murders by the Zizian ‘trans terror cult’ raises questions about the role of opposite sex hormones treatment.

A complex cross-country story, mostly ignored by corporate media, has been exposed by investigative journalist Andy Ngo who has shown that a series of murders from coast to coast are likely connected to members of a bizarre “radical leftist trans militant cult.”

On January 20, Border Patrol Agent David Maland was shot to death during what started out as a routine traffic stop near the Canadian border in Vermont. That was the event that triggered the release of the research Ngo had collected concerning the “Ziz” cult.

An infographic included with Ngo’s excellent reporting for the New York Post provides the easiest means for understanding the who, what, when, and where of this convoluted story; a story where it’s difficult to ascertain even the sexes of the major players, and even more difficult to divine their motives. Ngo literally connected the dots for his readers.

Each of the Zizian cult members are reported to be highly educated, identify as transgender or non-binary, and have chosen to live on the fringes of society while building an arsenal of weapons for a not-yet-understood purpose.

Ngo also described the group as “highly educated trans vegan ‘rationalists’ who hold fringe, esoteric ideological beliefs about transhumanism and animal rights.”

It appears the Zizians had been preparing to incite terror, and were not above murdering anyone who they perceived as standing in their way.

 

According to Ngo, Agent Maland was shot and killed by Teresa “Milo” Consuelo Youngblut after she and “Zizian” compatriot Felix “Ophelia” Bauckholt were pulled over by Maland.

The guns used by Youngblut and Bauckholt were discovered to be owned by a person of interest in other murders, Jack LaSota – nicknamed “Ziz” – the trans leader of the eponymous cult. The FBI’s search of the duo’s Toyota Prius turned up guns, ammunition, and tactical gear including night-vision equipment and full-face respirators.

“Youngblut is a biological female who identifies as trans and lists having neo-pronouns as ‘xe/xem/xyrs’ on social media,” explained Ngo, adding that she “graduated from the prestigious and woke north Seattle private institution Lakeside School, which Bill Gates also attended.”

“Bauckholt was a biological male who identified as trans and used feminine pronouns,” wrote Ngo. “He was an award-winning youth math genius from Freiburg, Germany.”

Youngblut had planned to marry 22-year-old fellow Lakeside School alumnus Maximilian Bentley Snyder, “an ‘any pronouns’ computer science whiz from a wealthy Seattle family,” according to Ngo.

Snyder was arrested for killing 82-year-old Curtis Lind in Vallejo, California, presumably to keep him from testifying in court against members of the cult.

Lind had previously been seriously wounded by members of the Zizian cult who were squatting on his land after he tried to evict them.

During the attack, the cult members impaled Lind with a sword and repeatedly stabbed him, causing him to lose an eye, according to Ngo. “Lind shot two of the assailants, killing Amir ‘Emma’ Borhanian.”

In his LinkedIn profile, Snyder described himself as a “passionate scholar, data scientist, and creator” who attended Oxford University and was a National Merit Scholarship finalist.

Both Baukholt and Snyder will now face life in prison on murder charges.

Cult leader LaSota, a.k.a., “Ziz,” a transgender who calls himself “Andrea Phelps,” remains at large after attempting to fake his own death in 2022.

Michelle Zajko who identifies as non-binary, believed by police to have purchased the semi-automatic weapon used to kill Maland, is also wanted by law enforcement.

She has been identified as a person of interest in the New Year’s Eve 2022 murders of her parents in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, and is believed to also have ties with the slaying of the elderly Lind.

“Two other alleged members of the cult, Suri Dao and Alexander ‘Somni’ Leatham, both transgender, have a trial in April for the attempted murder of Lind, causing the death of their comrade, and other felonies,” notes Ngo. “Both of them have tried to escape from custody and face other charges.”

That trial may not occur, since the only witness, Curtis Lind, is dead.

With a nationwide manhunt underway for at least two of the strange trans cult members who are in hiding, this story isn’t over.

As in other recent episodes of threatsviolence, and mass killings by transgender individuals, the bizarre behavior and extreme violence and murders by Zizian cult members raises questions about the role of opposite sex hormone treatments.

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Long Ignored Criminal Infiltration of Canadian Ports Lead Straight to Trump Tariffs

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Sam Cooper

Briefings to Liberal Government on Chinese Infiltration of Vancouver Port and Canada’s Opioid Scourge Ignored

Trump Tariffs Loom as Critics Decry Ottawa’s “Fox in the Hen House” Approach to Border Security

As President Donald Trump readies sweeping tariffs against Canada on Saturday—citing Ottawa’s failure to secure its shared North American borders from fentanyl originating in China—The Bureau has obtained a remarkable December 1999 document from a senior law enforcement official, revealing Ottawa’s longstanding negligence in securing Vancouver’s port against drug trafficking linked to Chinese shipping entities.

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The letter, drafted by former Crown prosecutor Scott Newark and addressed to Ottawa’s Security Intelligence Review Committee (SIRC), urged the body to reconsider explosive findings from a leaked RCMP and CSIS report detailing the infiltration of Canada’s “porous” borders by Chinese criminal networks.

Titled “Re: S.I.R.C. Review in relation to Project Sidewinder,” Newark’s letter alleges systemic failures that enabled Chinese State Council owned shipping giant COSCO and Triads with suspected Chinese military ties to penetrate Vancouver’s port system. He further asserts that federal authorities ignored repeated briefings and warnings from Canadian law enforcement—warnings based on intelligence gathered by Canadian officials in Hong Kong, who initiated the Sidewinder review.

Newark also warned that Liberal Prime Minister Jean Chrétien’s decision to dismantle Canada’s specialized Ports Police and privatize national port control had left the country dangerously exposed to foreign criminal networks, noting he had personally briefed the Canadian government on these concerns as early as 1996.

Addressing his letter to SIRC’s chair, Quebec lawyer Paule Gauthier, Newark wrote:

“As the former (1994-98) Executive Officer of the Canadian Police Association, I was assigned responsibility for dealing with the issue of the federal government’s changes to control of the national ports and policing therein.”

“This involved close examination of matters such as drug, weapon, and people smuggling through the national ports and, in particular, both the growing presence of organized criminal groups at ports and the ominous hazard control of those ports by such groups represented.”

Newark’s letter goes on to allege widespread failures in Ottawa that facilitated Chinese Triad infiltration of Vancouver’s port, revealing federal authorities’ reluctance to act on warnings from RCMP officer Garry Clement and immigration control officer Brian McAdam—former Canadian officials based in Hong Kong who had sounded the alarm, prompting the Sidewinder review.

Newark explained to SIRC’s chair that, during his tenure as Executive Officer of the Canadian Police Association, he prepared approximately fifty detailed policy briefs for the government and regularly appeared before parliamentary committees and in private ministerial briefings.

“I can assure you that in all of that time, no clearer warning was ever given by Canada’s rank and file police officers to the national government than what was done in our unsuccessful attempt to prevent the disbandment of the specialized Canada Ports Police in combination with the privatization of the ports themselves,” Newark’s letter to SIRC states.

The letter continues, noting that in October 1996, Newark met with Chrétien’s Transport Minister David Anderson—later addressing the Transport Committee—to highlight the imminent threat posed by Asian organized crime’s infiltration of port operations. Newark’s written briefing to the Minister underscored the gravity of the situation with a blunt question:

“Who exactly are the commercial port operators?”

Citing the Anderson briefing document, Newark’s letter to SIRC states that Anderson had been warned:

“We are, for example, aware of serious concerns amongst the international law enforcement community surrounding the ownership of ports and container industries in Asia and, in particular, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the People’s Republic of China. There is simply no longer any doubt that drugs like heroin are coming from these destinations through the Port of Vancouver, moved by organized criminal gangs whose assets include ‘legitimate’ properties.”

The Anderson briefing also referenced a British Columbia anti-gang unit report, titled “Organized Crime on Vancouver Waterfront,” which made clear that the Longshoreman’s Union had been infiltrated by the Hells Angels.

“The movement of goods through Canada’s ports requires an independence in policing that is impossible without public control,” the report warned.

It concluded:

“This report should be taken as a specific warning to this Government that, prior to downloading operational control over the ports themselves to private interests, Government be absolutely certain as to who owns what—and that it can continue that certainty with power to refuse acquisition of port assets in the future.”

Scott Newark’s letter to SIRC then turns to new intelligence—gathered from Canadian and U.S. officials—that further underscored the vulnerability created by Chrétien’s border policies.

“To now learn that law enforcement and public officials in Canada and the United States have linked a company (COSCO), granted docking and other facilities in Vancouver, to Asian organized crime, arms and drug smuggling is, to say the least, disturbing,” Newark’s December 1999 letter states.

“That this company, its principals, subsidiaries, and partners have been associated with various military agencies of a foreign government—agencies themselves identified by Canadian and American officials as having unhealthy connections to Triad groups—makes a bad situation even worse.”

Newark next addressed the broader implications of Canada’s failure to enforce border security, particularly in relation to the deportation of foreign criminals—a process he had sought to reform while serving with the Canadian Police Association.

Drawing on his experience, he described a deeply flawed immigration enforcement system, one that allowed individuals with serious criminal records to remain in Canada indefinitely. The problem, he wrote, was twofold: not only were foreign criminals able to enter Canada with ease, but authorities also failed to deport those with outstanding arrest warrants.

Newark recounted how, in 1996, a Cabinet Minister requested that he meet with Brian McAdam, a former senior foreign service officer in Hong Kong who had spent years uncovering organized crime’s grip on Canada’s immigration system. McAdam’s detailed revelations, he wrote, had directly led to the launch of Project Sidewinder.

Newark told SIRC that even after leaving the Canadian Police Association in 1998, he remained in contact with McAdam and other officials working to expose this vast and complex national security risk posed by foreign criminal networks.

It was this ongoing communication that led to an even more alarming discovery. Newark wrote that he was stunned to learn that Canada’s government had not only terminated Project Sidewinder but had gone so far as to destroy some related files.

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Newark suggests SIRC’s chair, in her review of Sidewinder, should determine whether “Sidewinder should not have been cancelled … why such inappropriate action was taken and at whose direction this was done.”

He concludes that SIRC should also freshly examine why intelligence reporting from the Canadian officials in Hong Kong, Brian McAdam and Garry Clement had been ignored in Ottawa.

Newark’s letter to SIRC says these failures to act on intelligence included the “Inappropriate granting of visas to Triad members or associates” and “Granting of docking facilities with attendant consequences to COSCO”—and “Failure of CIC and Foreign Affairs to respond appropriately to the various information supplied by McAdam and Clement in relation to material pertaining to Sidewinder.”

In an exclusive interview with The Bureau, Garry Clement, who contributed to investigations referenced in Newark’s letter, corroborated many of its claims and provided further insight. Clement recalled his role in Project Sunset, a 1990s investigation into Chinese Triads’ efforts to gain control over Vancouver’s ports.

“I can remember having a discussion with Scott when he wrote that to SIRC because Scott and I go back a long time,” Clement said. “I knew about him writing on it, but I knew it was also buried.”

He described his own intelligence work during the same period:

“I wrote in the nineties when I was the liaison officer in Hong Kong, a very long intelligence brief on the Chinese wanting to basically acquire or build out a port at the Surrey Fraser Docks area. And it was going to be completely controlled by that time, with Triad influence, but it was going to be controlled by China.”

Clement expressed frustration that decades of warnings had gone unheeded:

“The bottom line is that here we are almost 40 years later, talking about an issue that was identified in the ‘90s about our ports and allowing China to have free access—and nothing has been done over that period of time.”

Newark’s urgent recommendation for SIRC to reconsider Sidewinder’s warnings on Vancouver’s ports was never acted upon.

“We still don’t have Port Police. We got nobody overseeing them,” Clement added. “The ports themselves, it’s sort of like putting a fox in the hen house and saying, ‘Behave yourself.’”

Finally, when asked about the Trudeau government’s claim this week that Canada is responsible for only one percent of the fentanyl entering the United States—a figure reported widely in Canadian media—Clement’s response was unequivocal.

“The fact that we’ve become a haven for transnational organized crime, it’s internationally known,” he said. “So when I read that, with the fentanyl—Trump is wrong in that there’s less than 1% of our fentanyl going to the United States. That’s a crock of shit. If you look at the two super labs that were taken down in British Columbia—I think there’s three now—the amount they were capable of producing was more than the whole Vancouver population could have used in 10 years. So we know that Vancouver has become a transshipment point to North America for opiates and cocaine and other drugs because it’s a weak link, and enforcement is not capable of keeping up with transnational organized crime.”

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That opinion is evidently acknowledged by British Columbia Premier David Eby, according to documents from Canada’s Foreign Interference Commission that say Eby sought meetings with Justin Trudeau’s National Security Advisor.

A record from the Hogue Commission, sanitized for public release, outlines the “context and drivers” behind Eby’s concerns, including “foreign interference; election security; countering fentanyl, organized crime, money laundering, corruption.”

The documents state Ottawa’s Privy Council Office—which provides advice to Justin Trudeau’s cabinet—had recommended that British Columbia continue to work with the federal government on initiatives like the establishment of a new Canada Financial Crimes Agency to bolster the nation’s ability to respond swiftly to complex financial crimes.

Additionally, the PCO highlighted that Canada, the United States, and Mexico were supposedly collaborating on strategies to reduce the supply of fentanyl, including addressing precursor chemicals and preventing the exploitation of commercial shipping channels—a critical area where British Columbia, and specifically the Port of Vancouver, plays a significant role.

Eby acknowledged the concerns again this week in an interview with Macleans.

“I understood Trump’s concerns about drugs coming in. We’ve got a serious fentanyl problem in B.C.; we see the precursor chemicals coming into B.C. from China and Mexico. We see ties to Asian and Mexican organized crime groups. We’d been discussing all of that with the American ambassador and fellow governors. That’s why it was such a strange turnaround, from ‘Hey, we’re working together on this!’ to suddenly finding ourselves in the crosshairs.”

Yet, despite Eby’s claims of intergovernmental efforts, critics—including Garry Clement—argue that nothing has changed. Vancouver’s port remains alarmingly vulnerable, a decades-old concern that continues to resurface as fentanyl and other illicit drugs flood North American markets.

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