The DHS funding standoff in light of recent terror attacks

As of this writing, there have been four terrorist attacks in the United States over the last two weeks, and they’ve all shared some commonalities.

On March 1, there was a suspected terrorist attack at an Austin, Texas, bar, carried out by a man named Ndiaga Diagne, a naturalized American citizen from Senegal, who killed three people and injured 15 more before being shot and killed by police. He was said to be wearing a sweatshirt that read “Property of Allah” and a T-shirt underneath with an Iranian flag design on it. He also reportedly had a Quran inside his vehicle.

On March 7, there was an attempted terrorist attack outside of Gracie Mansion in New York City. The mansion is the official mayoral residence, and there was a “Stop the Islamic Takeover of New York City” protest being held outside against the city’s anti-Israel mayor, Zohran Mamdani, who was sworn in on the Islamic Quran and describes himself as a Shia Muslim.

Two adult teenagers crossed the border from Pennsylvania into New York and attended a counterprotest where they allegedly proceeded to throw explosive devices into the crowd of anti-Mamdani protesters. Their names are Emir Balat (Turkish-American) and Ibrahim Kayumi (Afghan-American), and the DOJ alleges “they were acting in support of ISIS, a designated foreign terrorist organization.”

They allegedly wanted to kill more people than the Boston Marathon bombers did. Three people were killed and hundreds injured in that 2013 terrorist attack. One of the bombers “told federal agents that he and his brother were motivated by extremist Islamic beliefs,” The New York Times reported.

Last Thursday, there were two attacks on the same day. There was one at Old Dominion University in Virginia, where Mohamed Bailor Jalloh, an ISIS-sympathizing naturalized citizen from Sierra Leone, yelled “Allahu Akbar” before opening fire on an ROTC classroom, killing the professor and injuring two students before being taken down by unarmed students who “rendered him no longer alive,” the FBI noted.

In Michigan, there was a terrorist attack involving a rifle-wielding madman who crashed his car into a synagogue in a “targeted act of violence against the Jewish community,” according to the FBI.

Ayman Mohamad Ghazali, a Lebanese national, eventually took his own life in the attack after his vehicle caught fire and security officers engaged him. Thankfully, the 140 children at the synagogue’s day care center, and clergy and staffers, were unharmed.

Ghazali had family members who were killed in a recent Israeli airstrike in Lebanon, as reported by NBC News. At least one of the family members was a commander for the Iranian-backed Hezbollah terrorists, according to the Israel Defense Forces.

As all of this has been playing out, Congressional Democrats have refused to back down on the partial government shutdown, which has primarily impacted the Department of Homeland Security — the agency charged with protecting the homeland against threats foreign and domestic.

The reason they’re holding up funding is that they have “concerns” about federal immigration enforcement operations, which is code for Democrats wanting to protect criminal illegal immigrants from being deported.

Because of this standoff, DHS is only partially funded, which leaves the United States more vulnerable to the exact type of Islamist-inspired attacks we’ve seen play out in recent weeks on our soil.

Democrats need to decide where they stand: with criminal illegal immigrants or giving DHS the funding it needs to help protect American citizens from increasing instances of terroristic threats and attacks. That they continue to hold out even in the face of such incidents tells us a lot about them, with none of it being good.

North Carolina native Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym Sister Toldjah and is a media analyst and regular contributor to RedState and Legal Insurrection.