By Esti DeAngelis, Managing Editor
On March 1, 2026, Ndiaga Diagne opened fire at a bar in downtown Austin, Texas, killing three people and injuring more than a dozen others. On March 12, Mohamed Bailor Jalloh fired into a classroom at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, killing a Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) professor and injuring two ROTC students. Hours later, Ayman Mohamad Ghazali rammed his car into the Temple Israel synagogue in West Bloomfield Township, Michigan, aiming to massacre dozens of preschoolers.
All three of the attackers had terrorist ties or sympathies. Pictures obtained by CBS News show Diagne before the Austin attack wearing a sweatshirt that reads “Property of Allah,” and a picture of his body after he was killed by police reveals a t-shirt design based on the flag of the Islamic Republic of Iran. A lawsuit alleges that in 2016, Diagne also hit a pedestrian with his car, disabling her for life. In 2017, Jalloh, who had previously served in the Virginia National Guard, pleaded guilty to attempting to provide material support for ISIS and served time in prison before being released in 2024. Authorities say he shouted “Allahu Akbar” before opening fire in the classroom. Ghazali’s brother was, according to the IDF, a Hezbollah commander. The FBI called his attack “a Hezbollah-inspired act of terrorism.”
All three men also had something else in common. They were all naturalized U.S. citizens. Diagne is originally from Senegal, Jalloh from Sierra Leone and Ghazali from Lebanon. The United States imported its own terrorists.
America has a long, rich history with immigration.
An American has no distinct color, ethnicity or country of origin. The conviction alone that the United States is bound together not by any of these superficial characteristics but by deeper ideals is what makes this country unique. There is no American race but only an American dream, one based on a value system that is cherished around the world.
Today, that value system is being challenged. The source of the challenge is a simple misunderstanding of what it means to be an American. Because American identity is not hinged on factors like race or religion, some have insisted that American identity is not hinged on anything at all. In short, they believe that anyone can become an American. We are, after all, a nation of immigrants, right?
But there is one element of the people that make up our nation that often gets left out. We are a nation of immigrants who believe in the American experiment. If the people who came here over the decades and centuries past had not believed in that experiment, our country would not be what it is today. And if the people who we allow to come here today do not believe in it, our country will become unrecognizable.
Ndiaga Diagne, Mohamed Bailor Jalloh and Ayman Mohamad Ghazali did not believe in the American experiment. Radicalization can certainly happen to those born and raised here, but it is the job of our immigration system to recognize the signs of those not truly committed to the beliefs and the freedoms that make our country great. Instead, our immigration system allowed these men into the country and, later, granted them citizenship.
There is perhaps no issue in American public life today so contentious as immigration. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids have led to widespread unrest in cities like Minneapolis, and celebrities have asserted from the world’s biggest stages that “no one is illegal on stolen land.” Some of this criticism rests on the valid premise that even those who enter our country illegally ought to be treated with dignity and respect in their dealings with the immigration system. But much of it asserts something far more sinister: the United States has no right to be concerned with its own border security. This is the attitude that welcomed terrorists onto American soil.
There are those who are not concerned with terrorist threats to the United States. But there are also those who make what on the surface seems like a somewhat valid point: those born in America can be criminals and terrorists as well. Singling out illegal immigrants, they argue, is xenophobic or racist. In fact, they note, illegal immigrants have lower crime rates than the rest of the population. This is an argument worth exploring.
It is the responsibility of the U.S. government to protect Americans from all forms of crime, and different forms of crime demand different modes of prevention. Crimes committed by repeat offenders can be prevented by putting those repeat offenders in jail. Crimes committed in high-crime areas can be prevented by properly funding and training police forces and having them form stronger relationships with the communities they serve. And crimes committed by individuals who did not enter the country lawfully can be prevented in a different way: by ensuring that those who enter the country have the potential to be healthy, productive members of society. It is the obligation of our government to ensure that those with criminal or terrorist pasts and those with ideologies diametrically opposed to liberty and freedom cannot enter the country. Without meaningful border security and immigration enforcement, crimes committed by these people become less preventable.
In reality, lax border security and lax policies around immigration result in crimes committed both by legal and illegal immigrants. Allowing those who hate America to enter its borders, either legally through extremely liberal immigration policies or illegally through relaxed border security, is suicidal. The U.S. has not only a right but a responsibility to demand the most basic ideological conformity among those who seek to come here. Support for a terrorist organization should be a disqualifying factor.
Yes, some will slip through the cracks even in a stricter system. But we have a responsibility to prevent what is preventable. We may disagree about how best to do this, but total immigration anarchy is not the answer. Total immigration anarchy allowed gang members to sneak into the U.S. and commit barbaric crimes. It allowed a man who would later try to send money to ISIS become a U.S. citizen.
These individuals are not representative of the average person crossing the border into the United States. But how can you catch the bad guys if you don’t demonstrate a basic level of suspicion toward everyone? Most people won’t try to smuggle guns past metal detectors. Most won’t try to bring a bomb through airport security. This is because those who would want to do these things know security checks will stop them. Security, including that of our borders, is a form of deterrence. When you instead signal that you are willing to assume the best of every person who tries to enter the country, those who do not have good intentions will exploit the relaxed policies. They will sneak across the border or even be let in legally while smuggling a time bomb of extremism or criminality that is waiting to explode.
Some disagree with the methods of enforcement. These are valid complaints. But those who reject the notion that any enforcement at all is proper are essentially rejecting the concept of national sovereignty altogether, replacing it with a belief that everyone is a “citizen of the world.” These are the people who believe that crossing a border should be like crossing a street. Western norms and values cannot survive such a mindset. When you import large swaths of people who do not share your basic worldview, bad things are bound to happen. Europe has learned this the hard way.
We can have compassion for those who try to come here in search of a better life. We can have debates about deportation and the treatment of those in ICE custody. But this compassion cannot come at the expense of those who already live here. A country’s foremost responsibility is to its own citizens. To allow the entry of individuals hostile to American values is an abdication of this responsibility.
Everyone, Americans and those who wish to become Americans, deserves a better system. The American immigrant story is an inspiring one, premised on those immigrants’ belief in this country and its values. But it takes only a cursory glance at headlines around the world for one to understand that there are also people who wish to see our country and everything it stands for destroyed. Suggesting that no one will try to destroy it from within is foolish.
For “American” to mean something, there must be people who are not and cannot be American. Physical borders are ideological ones as well, and without them, this country will have no national identity at all. It is that national identity that draws so many hardworking, optimistic people to this country every single day. We owe it to everyone in pursuit of that American dream to make sure that it will continue to exist.
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