Home Homeland Safety Committee Chairman Mark Inexperienced, R-Tenn., stated Wednesday the “nationwide safety blunders of the previous 4 years” have “emboldened” foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs) and homegrown violent extremism.
The committee on Wednesday morning launched an up to date model of its Terror Menace Snapshot evaluation, highlighting threats posed by homegrown extremists impressed by international jihadist networks like ISIS in America and around the globe.
“Emboldened by the nationwide safety blunders of the previous 4 years, international terrorist organizations and jihadist networks overseas stay dedicated to recruiting and radicalizing people on U.S. soil.”
The up to date report comes lower than a month after Texas native and U.S. navy veteran Shamsud-Din Jabbar killed 14 civilians Jan. 1, when he drove a truck via crowds of New 12 months’s revelers on Bourbon Road round 3 a.m. in what federal authorities described as an ISIS-inspired terrorist assault.
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“The New Orleans terrorist assault was a stark reminder that the phobia menace to America is alive and chronic,” Inexperienced stated. “The Home Homeland Safety Committee highlighted this truth again in October, and, sadly, Individuals have witnessed main escalations in these threats simply previously three months.”
The report particulars greater than 50 jihadist circumstances throughout 30 states between April 2021 and January 2025, together with “dozens of makes an attempt to supply materials assist to ISIS,” “offering materials assist to Hizballah and al Qaeda,” “receiving military-type coaching from ISIS and Hizballah” and “car ramming assaults.”
NEW ORLEANS TERRORIST RADICALIZED BY ISIS ONLINE WITHIN WEEKS, FBI DIRECTOR SAYS
Officers on Bourbon Road after a car traveled right into a crowd on New Orleans’ Canal and Bourbon Road, Wednesday Jan. 1, 2025. (AP Picture/Gerald Herbert)
From the botched Afghanistan withdrawal in August 2021 to the New Orleans assault, the report features a detailed listing of all alarming terrorist-inspired assaults and arrests since former President Biden took workplace 4 years in the past.
“There is no such thing as a query that our nationwide safety is in a state of disrepair after the previous 4 years of failed management.”
Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence Chairman August Pfluger stated Wednesday that “Individuals have been the goal of terror at public celebrations, and ISIS and al Qaeda are emboldened within the Center East, North Africa and Southeast Asia.
The FBI launched pictures of surveillance footage that present Shamsud-Din Jabbar an hour earlier than he drove a truck down Bourbon Road in New Orleans early Jan. 1, 2025. (FBI through AP)
“There may be immense work to do to right course and bolster our homeland safety. That work begins now.”
The committee additionally famous that vehicular-ramming assaults just like the one in New Orleans are rising as a big and rising menace.
A number of victims of the New Orleans assault have sued town for negligence, citing a number of situations when the specter of a terrorist assault on Bourbon Road was talked about in official metropolis planning paperwork.
BOURBON STREET TERROR VICTIMS SUE NEW ORLEANS AS LOUISIANA AG INVESTIGATES SECURITY LAPSES
Investigators converge after an individual drove a car right into a crowd on Bourbon Road in New Orleans Jan. 1, 2025. (AP Picture/Gerald Herbert)
One lawsuit filed on behalf of seven victims by Morris Bart, LLC, says the defendants “had years of alternatives to repair this identified downside,” and “[c]ity contractors didn’t stay as much as contractual obligations and carry out work within the order and method specified.
“One situation offered by [contractor] Mott MacDonald eight months earlier than this tragedy even concerned a Ford F-150 truck particularly turning proper on to Bourbon Road from Canal Road, an incredibly related menace that was seemingly predictable earlier than December 31.”
WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT VICTIMS OF NEW ORLEANS TERRORIST ATTACK
Police examine a criminal offense on Bourbon Road in New Orleans Jan. 1, 2025. A driver plowed into crowds of New 12 months’s revelers and started firing a weapon within the early hours of the morning. (Kat Ramirez for Fox Information Digital)
Official suggestions for New Orleans safety measures within the French Quarter as a part of a $2.3 billion infrastructure mission that started in 2017 included the installment of latest bollards on Bourbon Road to forestall mass casualty occasions the FBI recognized as a possible menace within the fashionable vacationer space.
The town started planning up to date safety measures, together with bollards meant to cease automobiles from coming into busy streets within the French Quarter, round that point.
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“The French Quarter is commonly densely full of pedestrians and represents an space the place a mass casualty incident may happen,” a 2017 report states. “This space additionally presents a threat and goal space for terrorism that the FBI has recognized as a priority that the Metropolis should tackle.
“Following the assaults in Good, France; in London, England; and the latest NYC Instances Sq. incident that cited bollards saved lives, it has change into clear how fashionable vacationer areas could be threatened by attackers with automobiles and weapons.”
A masked Islamic State terrorist poses holding the ISIS flag in 2015. (Footage from Historical past/Common Pictures Group through Getty Pictures)
A separate, confidential 2019 report obtained by Fox Information from safety consulting agency Interfor Worldwide, warned Bourbon Road was the “most high-profile goal” in New Orleans for a terror assault. The 60-page safety evaluation commissioned by the French Quarter Administration District states bluntly, “The present bollard system on Bourbon Road doesn’t seem to work.”
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The FBI continues to analyze the assault and stated Jabbar was motivated by ISIS extremism.
Federal authorities introduced final week that Jabbar had beforehand visited New Orleans on two events — as soon as on Oct. 30, 2024, and once more on Nov. 10, 2024. The attacker additionally visited Cairo, Egypt, and Toronto, Canada, previous to the assault, the FBI stated.
Whereas Jabbar apparently acted alone, authorities are nonetheless investigating whether or not he had any accomplices.
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