By Joshua Arnold

The U.S. Department of Justice on Tuesday indicted an Afghan national living in Oklahoma City “for conspiring to conduct an Election Day terrorist attack in the United States on behalf of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), a designated foreign terrorist organization (FTO).” Along with his wife’s juvenile brother, Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi plotted to attack “large gatherings of people” and “die as martyrs.”

The FBI foiled the plot with a months-long sting operation, according to Senator James Lankford (R-Okla.). They arrested Tawhedi and his co-conspirator after they purchased two AK-47 rifles, magazines, and ammunition from a “confidential human source” and “other FBI assets.”

The good news is that U.S. law enforcement foiled a potentially deadly and disruptive terrorist plot. The bad news is that the episode shows “just how vulnerable we are for attack,” said Rep. Josh Brecheen (R-Okla.) on Wednesday’s “Washington Watch.”

Election Vulnerability

A terrorist attack on Election Day would harm America far beyond any lives taken in the attack. It would infect our civic institutions with fear, further eroding social trust and public confidence in our elections.

As necessary as ballot security is for free and fair elections, voter security is even more fundamental. Voters who feel unsafe or intimidated at polling places may refrain from voting or change their votes, undermining the ability of elections to accurately record the will of the people. This is the reason behind laws requiring secret ballots or laws prohibiting certain campaign activities too close to a polling location.

If Islamist terrorists start attacking polling locations on Election Day, how many American voters will become more nervous about waiting in line to vote — as sitting targets? “‘Vulnerable’ is a key word,” agreed Family Research Council Action President Jody Hice. “Underline that, highlight it, and circle it.”

The ugly truth is that the U.S. government possibly could have prevented Tawhedi from forming this would-be terrorist plot in the first place. Tawhedi reportedly “entered the United States in 2021 under a special visa,” observed Hice, “which again underscores the Biden-Harris administration’s repeated failures to manage the entire immigration vetting process.”

Botched Withdrawal

In 2021, the Biden-Harris administration determined that, come hell or high water, they would remove all American troops from Afghanistan by an arbitrary and unfeasible date. This decision, made against the advice of senior military officials, effectively abandoned the country’s fledgling democratic government — not to mention the nation’s women — to the cruel mercy of the Taliban, a band of Islamist extremists who had previously sheltered al-Qaeda training camps.

America’s chaotic withdrawal left pro-American Afghans hanging in the wind. The Taliban would surely hunt down and kill men who served as guides for U.S. troops, for instance, or Christians. So some Afghans legitimately qualified for political asylum in America.

But, to meet the previously determined, arbitrary deadline for the evacuation of U.S. troops, the U.S. State Department had neither time nor manpower to either vet or evacuate Afghans in need of U.S. asylum. Several anecdotes suggest that the State Department provided “little to no help of any consequence” to congressmen and private citizens striving to evacuate Afghans, as Hice, then a congressman, recalled his own experience.

The U.S. State Department did grant special visas to a number of people flown out of Afghanistan. But these flights were loaded hastily and without adequate vetting. In fact, “because of the debacle of the way that this country withdrew and then the lack of vetting that took place,” the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General said the “process [was] ripe for people to fall through the cracks,” explained Brecheen. “So you’ve had heightened numbers of people with this special visa,” but some of them may have come to the U.S. with bad intentions.

Some people who should have been evacuated were left behind or stranded in refugee camps in other countries like the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Meanwhile, some people received visas and boarded flights who had no basis to claim asylum in the U.S. By the end of the evacuation process, the Taliban controlled the airport where refugee flights boarded, which means they controlled who could or couldn’t board the flights. Tawhedi’s is an obvious case in which the system failed; Brecheen’s office is chasing down how he got a visa and what kind, but they have not yet received an answer.

Border Vulnerability

Boarding special evacuation flights from Afghanistan is not the only way that would-be terrorists with harmful intentions can make their way into America. “What happened with Afghanistan has shown the American people — in addition to what’s coming across the southern border — just how vulnerable we are for attack,” said Brecheen.

According to data released late last month, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has on its docket more than 660,000 illegal immigrants with a criminal history. This includes more than 400,000 convicted criminals and more than 200,000 with pending criminal charges who are no longer in ICE custody. These numbers include not only Central Americans fleeing crime and poverty in their home countries, but people from all over the world. Just last week, law enforcement agents apprehended 40 people from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Egypt, Turkey, and India at the southern border. Earlier this year, DHS discovered that over 400 illegal immigrants had been smuggled into the country through an ISIS-affiliated network, and the whereabouts of 50 remain unknown.

Proponents of illegal immigration — words that shouldn’t even belong together — like to claim that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than native-born Americans. Setting aside the fact that illegally entering the country is itself a crime, this claim misses two key points. First, every crime committed by an illegal immigrant in the U.S. is one the government could have prevented by barring that individual from entering the country — something that should at the very least be done for individuals with a violent criminal history.

Second, it only takes one bad actor, with the right plan, resources, and execution, to inflict devastation. It took years for the FBI to detect Tawhedi’s plot and then more months to catch him. How many other would-be terrorists are on the loose in America? And how many of them are law enforcement agencies able to track and capture?

In some nations around the world, violence and intimidation in elections are common, even expected — especially those with minimal history of fair and free elections. When America extends an unconditional invitation to residents of those countries to enter our country, we run the risk of elections in our country resembling the elections in theirs (it doesn’t take a voter registration card to intimidate poll-goers). This is obviously not in the best interest of America.

This is not to say that all immigrants are bad for America and our tradition of popular election, nor that everyone in foreign nations opposes free and fair elections. Rather, it suggests that America should discriminate between immigrants — not based upon any unreasonable categories, but based upon their goodwill toward our country and their willingness to abide by our laws. If an immigrant is glad to join American society, then America should be glad to have him. But if an immigrant hates America and contemplates violence against our people or our institutions, we shouldn’t let him into our country.

This should be common sense. And it is roughly what our current immigration law tries to achieve. Alas, the Biden-Harris administration has ignored that law and unwisely pursued a policy of allowing the maximum number of immigrants into our country, regardless of their intentions. This policy will not end well, and an ISIS terror plot in Oklahoma City on Election Day — though foiled, fortunately — is only the beginning.

Joshua Arnold is a senior writer at The Washington Stand.