From Todd Bensman from the Center for Immigration Studies as posted in The Federalist

Americans deserve a full-scale investigation into what happened in Chicago and how to prevent the next open-borders-enabled attack on U.S. soil.

Surprisingly little news coverage followed America’s first terror attack by an illegal border-crossing immigrant on U.S. soil. On Saturday, 22-year-old Mauritanian Sidi Mohamed Abdallahi was found dead of an apparent hanging suicide in his Cook County, Illinois jail cell. America must learn from this to prevent the next attacks on U.S. soil by border-infiltrating jihadists.

Abdallahi illegally jumped the border from Tijuana to San Diego in March 2023 and was freed by U.S. Border Patrol. Under orders from the Biden-Harris Department of Homeland Security, Border Patrol has released millions of illegal entrants into the United States in the last four years.

On October 26, Abdallahi allegedly hunted down and shot in the back an identifiably Orthodox Jewish man walking to synagogue, then tried to up the body count by attacking responding police while shouting “Allahu Akbar!” Abdallahi still didn’t quit shooting even after police wounded him. Somehow he, the police, and the victim all survived.

This benchmarking story of America’s first terror attack by a border-crossing jihadist was largely ignored by national news media even though it came just before the brewing political war between pro-illegal immigrant Democrats and an incoming Trump administration promising an illegal immigration crackdown largely on national security grounds.

Now there will not even be a trial. Abdallahi’s sudden exit is no doubt privately regarded as a gift to pro-open borders advocates, their media sympathizers, and Democrat elected officials. But independent media and elected government must press for further details to prevent the next border-crossing terrorist attack.

What We Know So Far

At a late November arraignment reported on by a Chicago Fox News affiliate and the Chicago Sun-Times, prosecutors revealed that, while working at an Amazon warehouse, Abdallahi carefully planned his attack on Jewish targets due to jihadist ideology.

“This was not anything but a planned attack…an attempted assassination of these people,” Assistant State’s Attorney Anne McCord Rodgers told the court. “This was a calculated plan, on a public street…and attempted slaughter of that person and law enforcement officers.”

Abdallahi had mapped out the locations of two Chicago synagogues and a Jewish community, the conservative Chicago Sun-Times reported November 21. The search history also included “Jewish Community Center” and a gun store in suburban Lyons.

Once he shot the man in the back, Abdallahi displayed a relentless desire to increase his body count and seemed tactically aware of how to take out hard human targets like police officers. For example, his gun apparently jammed after shooting the Jewish victim, prosecutors said. He reportedly had the presence of mind to retreat to cover, fix the jam, then return to finish off the victim, but then retreated to cover again as first responders approached.

Abdallahi drove a few blocks around them, then returned on foot from a new direction and opened fire on four police officers and two paramedics tending the wounded man, prosecutors alleged. He then allegedly fired on the ambulance, hitting it twice as a fifth police officer returned fire.

Wounded, finally, Abdallahi fell. But he rose repeatedly to allegedly fire on the police even more before finally collapsing. Miraculously, none of his intended victims were hit.

This Case Has National Implications

The untold full story of Abdallahi’s illegal border crossing and attack in Chicago the next year, of course, goes beyond the evidence so far showing Abdallahi followed a violent ideology. Americans can no longer regard the possibility of Islamic terrorist infiltration from the southern border as merely a hypothetical bogeyman. Because of Chicago, no longer can the warnings of homeland security professionals like those quoted in my America’s Covert Border War book be dismissed as anti-immigrant fearmongering.

This terror attack and police gunbattle with an alleged border-crossing jihadist instead firmly justifies bipartisan public inquiry, public and private investigation, and analysis about border security policy that can stop future Abdallahis. After September 11, 2001, America justifiably worried about fixing the broken U.S. visa systems that 9/11 hijackers easily defrauded to enter the United States for that larger attack.

So far, the institutional media and government powers-that-be have managed to box up the Chicago incident as a mere local affair. It’s not even charged as a federal terrorism case.

Under pressure from Chicago’s Jewish community for Chicago officials to publicly acknowledge that a local Jewish man was violently attacked based on his religion, Cook County’s far-left, George Soros-backed State’s Attorney Kim Foxx (who leaves office next year) eventually charged Abdallahi with terrorism, under Illinois’ circa-9/11 terrorism statute.

This case demands intense national attention. Chicago’s attack is an uncontestable confirmation of the terrorism threat inherent in open borders policies. President Donald Trump promised throughout his campaign to reverse Democrats’ open border, catch-and-release policies. Yet open-borders advocates are organizing to wage political, information, and legal warfare to defeat Trump’s enforcement of U.S. immigration laws. Front-and-center attention on the Chicago terrorist attack would provide Americans the context they deserve during the melee over Trump’s planned illegal immigration fixes.

If the Chicago terror attack is allowed to fade away after Abdallahi’s burial, Americans will have been robbed of their ability to loudly petition for protection from the next such terror attack. The next attack could easily target the towns now vowing to “Trump-proof” themselves against policies that would deport other Abdallahis before they also can attack.

Questions Americans Deserve Answered

Failing to investigate this incident will likely leave the doors open to more such attacks. So far, there’s been no public sign of FBI or Department of Justice involvement in the Chicago case, as would be ordinary when Islamic terrorism is indicated in any attack on U.S. soil.

Ceding this case entirely to state and local authorities with less counterterrorism training and intelligence resources leaves too much on the table. For example: are co-conspirators or sympathizers who urged Abdallahi on still out there? Did foreign terrorism masters direct Abdallahi? Chicago police may be well-meaning and reasonably resourced, but counterterrorism is the FBI’s unique province.

If the bureau is not involved, why not? If it is, good, but to what extent did the FBI follow leads and intelligence and provide the results to Chicago PD (which may not hold the security clearances to ingest such information)? Might Chicago, a sanctuary city, even have refused to collaborate with the FBI for partisan reasons during a hotly contested presidential campaign?

Abdallahi reportedly did not flag on any terrorism or criminal databases when Border Patrol detained him in San Diego Sector. Was he ever detained and referred to the Border Patrol’s Tactical Terrorism Response Team or Immigration and Customs Enforcement 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 the Center for Immigration Studies through a Freedom of Information Act request, Border Patrol apprehended 18,260 Mauritanians illegally crossing the U.S. southern border from 2021 through December 2023. ISIS, al-Qaeda, al-Mourabitoun, and other violent Islamist groups operate throughout the Sahel region of northwest Africa, which includes Mauritania, according to many credible sources about international terrorism.

Face-to-face interviews with Mauritanians and all other special interest aliens can be the difference between deporting a dangerous terrorist or letting one into the country. Have those happened with those 18,260 Mauritanians admitted to the U.S. in just three years? Will they?

Abdallahi is dead. But his case presents a rare opportunity for the traditional bastions of government accountability to get interested and get to work with this last question in mind: Is a Jewish Chicagoan the first American to be shot by a border-crossing jihadi, or the last?

From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Jason Hopkins

The Canadian government made clear its beefing up its border security apparatus after President-elect Donald Trump threatened to impose sweeping tariffs against Canada and Mexico if the flow of illegal immigration and drugs are not reined in.

Trump in November announced on social media that he would impose a 25% tariff on all products from Canada and Mexico unless both countries do more to limit the level of illicit drugs and illegal immigration entering into the United States. In response, Canada Prime Minister Justin Trudeau met with the president-elect at his residence in Mar-a-Largo and his government has detailed what more it’s doing to bolster immigration enforcement.

“We got, I think, a mutual understanding of what they’re concerned about in terms of border security,” Minister of Public Safety Dominic LeBlanc, who accompanied Trudeau at Mar-a-Largo, said of the meeting in an interview with Canadian media. “All of their concerns are shared by Canadians and by the government of Canada.”

“We talked about the security posture currently at the border that we believe to be effective, and we also discussed additional measures and visible measures that we’re going to put in place over the coming weeks,” LeBlanc continued. “And we also established, Rosemary, a personal series of rapport that I think will continue to allow us to make that case.”

Trudeau’s Liberal Party-led government has pivoted on border enforcement since its first days in power.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) — the country’s law enforcement arm that patrols the border — is preparing to beef up its immigration enforcement capabilities by hiring more staff, adding more vehicles and creating more processing facilities, in the chance that there is an immigration surge sparked by Trump’s presidential election victory. The moves are a change in direction from Trudeau’s public declaration in January 2017 that Canada was a “welcoming” country and that “diversity is our strength” just days after Trump was sworn into office the first time.

While encounters along the U.S.-Canada border remain a fraction of what’s experienced at the southern border, activity has risen in recent months. Border Patrol agents made nearly 24,000 apprehensions along the northern border in fiscal year 2024 — marking a roughly 140% rise in apprehensions made the previous fiscal year, according to the latest data from Customs and Border Protection.

“While a change to U.S. border policy could result in an increase in migrants traveling north toward the Canada-U.S. border and between ports of entry, the RCMP now has valuable tools and insights to address this movement that were not previously in place,” read an RCMP statement provided to the Daily Caller News Foundation. “New mechanisms have been established which enable the RCMP to effectively manage apprehensions of irregular migrants between the ports.”

Trudeau’s pivot on illegal immigration enforcement follows the Canadian population growing more hawkish on the issue, public opinion surveys have indicated. Other polls also indicate Trudeau’s Liberal Party will face a beating at the voting booth in October 2025 against the Conservative Party, led by Member of Parliament Pierre Poilievre.

Trudeau’s recent overtures largely differ from Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, who has indicated she is not willing to bend the knee to Trump’s tariff threats. The Mexican leader in November said “there will be a response in kind” to any tariff levied on Mexican goods going into the U.S., and she appeared to deny the president-elect’s claims that she agreed to do more to beef up border security in a recent phone call.

Trump, who has vowed to embark on an incredibly hawkish immigration agenda once he re-enters office, has tapped a number of hardliners to lead his efforts. The president-elect announced South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem to lead the Department of Homeland Security, former acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Tom Homan to serve as border czar and longtime aide Stephen Miller to serve as deputy chief of staff for policy.