Category Archives: Department of Homeland Security

ISIS in America, Retweets to Raqqa

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ISIS in America    Read the full study here.

IT IS APPARENT that the U.S. is home to a small but active cadre of individuals infatuated with ISIS’s ideology, some of whom have decided to mobilize in its furtherance.

This section attempts to provide an overview of this demographic by drawing on research that attempted to reconstruct the lives—both real and virtual—of U.S.-based ISIS supporters. The research effort was based on legal documents, media reports, social media monitoring, and interviews with a variety of individuals, though there were at times limitations to both the amount and reliability of publicly available information.

 

The 71 individuals charged for ISIS-related activities (as of November 12, 2015)

 

ƒ.WHILE NOT AS LARGE as in many other Western countries, ISIS-related mobilization in the United States has been unprecedented. As of the fall of 2015, U.S. authorities speak of some 250 Americans who have traveled or attempted to travel to Syria/Iraq to join the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and 900 active investigations against ISIS sympathizers in all 50 states.

ƒ. Seventy-one individuals have been charged with ISIS-related activities since March 2014. Fifty-six have been arrested in 2015 alone, a record number of terrorism-related arrests for any year since 9/11. Of those charged:

‚. The average age is 26.

‚. 86% are male.

‚. Their activities were located in 21 states.

‚. 51% traveled or attempted to travel abroad.

‚. 27% were involved in plots to carry out attacks on U.S. soil.

‚. 55% were arrested in an operation involving an informant and/or an undercover agent.

ƒ. A small number of Americans have been killed in ISIS-related activities: three inside the U.S., at least a dozen abroad.

ƒ. The profiles of individuals involved in ISIS-related activities in the U.S. differ widely in race, age, social class, education, and family background. Their motivations are equally diverse and defy easy analysis.

ƒ. Social media plays a crucial role in the radicalization and, at times, mobilization of U.S.-based ISIS sympathizers.

The Program on Extremism has identified some 300 American and/or U.S.-based ISIS sympathizers active on social media, spreading propaganda, and interacting with like-minded individuals. Some members of this online echo chamber eventually make the leap from keyboard warriors to actual militancy.

ƒ. American ISIS sympathizers are particularly active on Twitter, where they spasmodically create accounts that often get suspended in a never-ending cat-and-mouse game. Some accounts (the “nodes”) are the generators of primary content, some (the “amplifiers”) just retweet material, others (the “shout-outs”) promote newly created accounts of suspended users.

ƒ. ISIS-related radicalization is by no means limited to social media. While instances of purely web-driven, individual radicalization are numerous, in several cases U.S.-based individuals initially cultivated and later strengthened their interest in ISIS’s narrative through face-to-face relationships. In most cases online and offline dynamics complement one another.

ƒ. The spectrum of U.S.-based sympathizers’ actual involvement with ISIS varies significantly, ranging from those who are merely inspired by its message to those few who reached mid-level leadership positions within the group.

 

Taliban Still Holds U.S. Hostages

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It is extraordinary that no one at the State Department, the National Security Council or the White House speaks of Americans held prisoner. It is all left to a military task force to solve. John Kerry is never available for comment.

Exclusive: Secret U.S. Hostage Held by Taliban Allies
Harris, DailyBeast: ‘There are still Americans in captivity in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region,’ a top congressman reveals. The question is: How many? And what’s Washington doing to recover them?
A group of Islamist militants aligned with the Taliban has been holding an American man hostage for more than a year, according to U.S. officials and others familiar with his case, which has not been reported previously.

The disclosure of another American hostage raises questions about how many Americans are being held abroad—and what the U.S. government is doing to recover them. The Obama administration has been working to streamline its hostage rescue efforts, which critics say have suffered from a lumbering bureaucracy that hasn’t kept family members fully informed about their loved ones. How effective those efforts have been is unclear.

The Daily Beast is not publishing the man’s name or many details about him at the request of his family and administration and law enforcement officials, who are concerned for his safety. The man is said to be held by the Haqqani network, a Taliban-aligned group that operates along the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Previously, The Daily Beast had agreed not to write anything at all about the hostage. However, on Monday, Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA), a leading critic in Congress of the Obama administration’s hostage rescue and recovery policies, wrote a public letter to President Obama in which he noted that “there are still Americans in captivity in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region.”

The only other American known to be held in that region is Caitlin Coleman, who was kidnapped along with her husband, Joshua Boyle, a Canadian citizen, while traveling in Afghanistan in 2012. Coleman had a child while in captivity, multiple U.S. officials have said.

While Hunter’s letter mentions no American hostages by name, a spokesperson for the congressman told The Daily Beast that by “Americans” the lawmaker is referring to “all Americans,” including Coleman, her child, and the American man being held.

The exact details of the man’s kidnapping remain unclear.

The militants said to be holding him have not made any public demands concerning his possible release. The Haqqani are known to negotiate for their captives and have conducted prisoner exchanges. A former government official in Afghanistan said the American man is alive and in good health, although his precise whereabouts remain unknown both to local officials and those in the United States.

U.S. and foreign sources knowledgeable about Coleman and her family’s case told The Daily Beast that they believe she, her husband, and their child are also alive and well. The family is also believed to be held by the Haqqani.
Coleman’s case differs from the American man’s in key respects. Her family, along with her husband’s, decided to issue a public appeal for their children’s safe return. And Coleman and Boyle have appeared in a video asking their governments to work for their release.

Efforts to recover all U.S. hostages are now under the control of a new Hostage Recovery Fusion Cell established in the wake of the abduction and killing of four Americans at the hands of the so-called Islamic State widely known as ISIS. Families of some of those hostages had publicly criticized the Obama administration for not communicating with them about the fate of their loved ones and of bungling attempts to free them.

The White House declined to comment for this story.
In his letter to Obama, Hunter said he was concerned that the FBI has been put in charge of the new cell and said the president should appoint a new hostage recovery coordinator, as required by a recently enacted defense bill.

“Given that the FBI is chiefly a law enforcement organization, it remains my belief that the FBI—despite its best intentions and efforts—is neither organized nor developed to lead hostage recovery in hostile areas,” Hunter wrote.

However, some family members of Americans now being held hostage have told The Daily Beast that the new fusion cell has improved communication and the flow of information from the government to families and bolstered their confidence that the U.S. government is working to recover their loved ones.
The efforts to recover Coleman and her family, as well as the other American  hostage, can be seen as a test case for how well the new fusion cell is working. But the fact that they’ve been in captivity so long suggests that efforts to free them have been slow going.

The Haqqani are known for negotiating ransom payments and prisoner exchanges, U.S. officials have said. Most notably, the group exchanged Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl for five senior Taliban fighters in 2015.

The administration justified that swap under what it says are long-standing traditions to exchange military prisoners in times of war. But the trade has also outraged some hostage families, who say their loved ones are being treated differently because they don’t wear a military uniform.

The White House has said that about 30 Americans are being held hostage outside the U.S. In Iran, at least four Americans are being held, including Washington Post journalist Jason Rezaian, Marine veteran Amir Hekmati, pastor Saeed Abedin, and businessman Siamak Namazi. A former FBI agent, Robert Levinson, went missing in Iran in 2007 and is believed to have been kidnapped.

American journalist Austin Tice has been missing since August 2012, when he disappeared south of Damascus. His fate remains unknown, and his family has launched a public campaign to draw attention to his case and spur efforts to bring him home.

Russian Threats Mount, Include Propaganda Machine

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‘Nothing is real, anything is possible’: Inside Putin’s propaganda machine

 

State Official: Russian Nuclear-Armed Drone Sub Threatens US

Moscow questioned on secret drone program

FreeBeacon: Russia’s development of a nuclear-armed drone submarine capable of inflicting widespread damage on U.S. coasts poses a serious threat, a senior State Department official testified on Tuesday.

Rose Gottemoeller, undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, told a House hearing that she has raised the issue with the Russians.

“I know we are concerned about it; of course we are concerned about it as threat to the United States,” Gottemoeller said under questioning from Rep. Mike Turner.

The undersecretary, who is the key policymaker for arms control issues, said the system would be a greater threat if “widely put into operation.”

The comment prompted Turner to reply: “One would probably be sufficiently troubling.”

“I think it is a troubling system, sir,” Gottemoeller said. Much more here.

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Putin’s False Narrative

ISW: President Vladimir Putin is actively misinforming his domestic audience and the international community about Russia’s first military intervention outside the former Soviet Union since Afghanistan. Putin has created a false narrative about the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) to disguise the true objectives behind Russia’s intervention Syria and is using this narrative to manipulate the international community. Putin encapsulated this false narrative in his UN speech calling for an alternate international coalition against ISIS on September 28, two days before the start of Russia’s air campaign in Syria.  Russia intervened in Syria on September 30 not to defeat ISIS, but rather to curb U.S. influence in the Middle East and to project Russian military power into the region to a historically unprecedented degree.
Russia’s air campaign is focused on targeting Syrian armed opposition groups fighting against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad rather than ISIS. Russia has grounded the rhetoric surrounding its military intervention in Syria in the immediate domestic terror threat posed by ISIS. ISIS includes an estimated 7,000 foreign fighters from the former Soviet Union and declared its own governorate in Russia’s restive North Caucasus region. Moscow does view ISIS as a legitimate security concern, but the dissonance between Russia’s claimed objectives and its actual behavior reveals that Russia uses anti-ISIS rhetoric as a pretext to pursue its larger strategic objectives. Russia seeks to preserve the Syrian regime and diminish the influence wielded by the U.S. and its regional allies, which support the Syrian opposition. Regime preservation in Damascus is a core Russian objective that enables Russia to cement its foothold in the Middle East and the eastern Mediterranean Sea while simultaneously expanding its influence through partnerships with Iran and the Iranian network of regional proxies. Putin is leveraging disinformation in order to obfuscate his true objectives in Syria and thereby manipulate the U.S. and regional actors into inadvertently helping Russia achieve its goals.

Unaccompanied Immigrant Children Placed With Convicted Criminals

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FoxLatino: “Although the whistle-blower claims to have relayed these concerns to supervisors in August of 2015,” the senators wrote in a letter to the secretaries of Homeland Security and Health and Human Services, whose departments are responsible for processing the youths, according to the Los Angeles Times, “apparently these individuals have no immediate plans to remove [unaccompanied minors] from their criminal sponsors, but are ‘discussing options.'”

In August reports emerged that federal authorities had placed a half a dozen teenage Guatemalan boys in the care of human traffickers in Ohio. The boys were forced to live trailers and work 12 hours a day at an egg farm, while having their paychecks confiscated and threatened with death if they sought help.

“Based on what I’ve learned to date, I am concerned that the child placement process failure that contributed to the Ohio trafficking case is part of a systemic problem rather than a one-off incident,” Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) said. “We continue to demand answers from the administration with the goal of uncovering how this abuse occurred and reforming the system to protect all minors against human trafficking.”

Immigration News: Unaccompanied Immigrant Children Placed With Convicted Criminals, Says Whistleblower

TheLatinPost: Two Republican senators have questioned if the Obama administration placed unaccompanied immigrant children with convicted criminals.

Republicans Sens. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and John Cornyn of Texas have asked U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Sylvia Burwell and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson if “unaccompanied alien children” (UAC) were released to sponsors with criminal records. The senators said a whistleblower alerted the Senate Judiciary Committee, which Grassley chairs, and made the allegation.

“According to the whistleblower, data compiled on a subset of UAC sponsors demonstrated that at least 3,400 sponsors of 29,000 listed in a UAC database have later been determined to have criminal convictions including re-entry after deportation, DUI, burglary, distribution of narcotics, domestic violence, homicide, child molestation, and sexual assault. Several of these criminal sponsors are even associated with, or actively engaged in, the practice of sex trafficking and human smuggling,” wrote Cornyn and Grassley in a letter to the HHS and DHS secretaries.

As the senators noted in their letter, an apprehended immigrant child is first processed by DHS’ law enforcement, and then transferred to HHS’ Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) to conduct background checks with the DHS’ Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency in hopes to find a sponsor. The “whistleblower” alleged the background checks were “not thoroughly performed and sponsors are not properly vetted or even fingerprinted.”

Grassley and Cornyn wrote several questions for the DHS and HHS secretaries to respond until Dec. 7. Questions include:

– Of the sponsors currently listed in the UAC portal (database), how many have criminal records?

– Are background checks conducted and fingerprints taken on all potential UAC sponsors? Please explain.

– If a sponsor’s criminal record is discovered after the sponsor has already accepted UACs, what processes or procedures do the agencies have to ensure the UACs are not left in the criminal sponsor’s care? Please explain.

– How many UAC sponsors have been convicted of child molestation? How many UAC sponsors have been convicted of homicide? How many UAC sponsors have been convicted of crimes of violence including sexual assault and domestic violence?

– Do background checks of UAC sponsors include running the sponsor’s name through the National Crime Information Center? If not, why not? Please provide a list of all databases and background checks that are queried for all UAC sponsors.

“It is not the practice of the Office of Refugee Resettlement to place unaccompanied children with sponsors who have serious criminal convictions,” ORR spokesman Mark Weber said in a statement. “The safety of the children is our primary concern and any allegation of even potential harm is taken seriously and will be investigated.”

Weber added that the ORR maintains a database for staffers to monitor sponsor’s names, addresses and assessments in addition to the number of time the sponsor requested a UAC.

According to the ORR, and based on info as of September, 27,520 unaccompanied minors have been released to sponsors during the 2015 fiscal year, which began in October 2014.

 

Seizing Chapo Guzman’s Assets or Not

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The highways in the United States belonged to El Chapo.

CatholicOnline: The cartel has such momentum trafficking heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine, and marijuana from Mexico to the United States, that despite El Chapo’s incarceration in a Mexican prison, the cartel continued all operations.

The DEA report shows the Sinaloa cartel “maintains the most significant presence in the United States,” adding, “Mexican TCOs pose the greatest criminal drug threat to the United States; no other group is currently positioned to challenge them.”

Mexico seizes El Chapo’s planes, cars, houses

MEXICO CITY — As the hunt for fugitive drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán intensifies, Mexican authorities recently announced they have confiscated 11 planes, eight vehicles and six houses belonging to the kingpin in the past five months.

That’s likely just a fraction of the assets Guzmán has accumulated during his life of crime. The Sinaloa Cartel he oversees traffics billions of dollars worth of narcotics to the United States every year, according to estimates from the Justice Department and the Drug Enforcement Administration.

The yawning gap between the seizures and Guzmán’s potential riches underscores a growing concern here: Why the Mexican government can’t or won’t seize more of Guzman’s ill-gotten gains. The problem, critics say, is a lack of laws with teeth, and the motivation to change that.

“Mexico is a weak state that has yet to form a political will around the implementation of such laws,” said lawyer Edgardo Buscaglia, who has addressed the Mexican Senate on asset forfeitures.

One issue is a 2009 law that was meant to give authorities broader powers to seize drug cartel members’ assets. Instead, the law allows only the attorney general — as opposed to local prosecutors — to confiscate assets, meaning that federal authorities are overburdened and cases routinely slip through the net.

The overall result is far fewer successfully prosecuted cases against organized crime — a total of 43 in the past six years in Mexico, about the same number neighboring Guatemala achieves each year, according to a Mexican Senate report.

The law also requires property owners to be sentenced before authorities can take their assets, delaying seizures by months or even years. Many cases collapse.

“Attacking criminal groups financially by pursuing the properties and firms that provide them with financial and logistical support is an essential part of the fight against organized crime,” said Antonio Mazzitelli, Latin American representative of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime. “In Mexico, they put a criminal in jail, and nothing happens.”

Since 2007, the Treasury Department has banned 95 Mexican companies and hundreds more individuals linked to El Chapo’s drug empire from operating in the United States. All continue to operate freely in Mexico, however.

Last year, an American grand jury indicted Ignacio Muñoz Orozco, the owner of a Mexican clothing chain, on money laundering charges related to the Sinaloa Cartel. Orozco served as a higher-level official in the federal Social Development Ministry in the mid-2000s and has yet to be charged with a crime in Mexico.

“There are thousands of such cases that Mexican prosecutors decline to pursue,” Buscaglia said.

Guzman’s case underscores the nature of corruption in the country, where watchdog group Transparency International reports criminals have “captured” public institutions.

The drug kingpin escaped from a maximum security prison in July using a mile-long tunnel. Police have arrested the prison governor and several guards in connection with the breakout.