Afghan citizen arrested in Texas for alleged bomb threat

WASHINGTON: An Afghan-born man has been taken into custody in Fort Worth, Texas, for allegedly planning a bomb attack. According to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the suspect posted a video on TikTok indicating he was constructing an explosive device that could potentially target the Fort Worth area.

Court documents show that the suspect, Mohammad Dawood Alokozay, has been charged at the state level with making a terroristic threat.

The DHS confirmed that Alokozay arrived in the United States in 2021 under the Biden administration’s “Operation Allies Welcome,” a program launched after the U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan to resettle Afghan nationals.

Another Afghan citizen who came to the U.S. through the same program, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, is accused of involvement in a separate incident earlier this week in Washington, D.C., in which two National Guard members were shot.

Alokozay was arrested on Tuesday during a joint operation by the Texas Department of Public Safety and the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force.

Records indicate that he was granted lawful permanent residency in the United States on September 7, 2022.

Earlier on Thursday, the Trump administration blamed Biden-era vetting failures for the admission of Rahmanullah Lakanwal, an Afghan immigrant suspected of shooting two National Guard members in Washington, D.C., but the alleged gunman was granted asylum this year under President Donald Trump, according to a U.S. government file seen by Reuters.

Rahmanullah Lakanwal, a 29-year-old Afghan national, entered the U.S. on September 8, 2021, under Operation Allies Welcome. The resettlement program was set up by former Democratic President Joe Biden after the U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021 that led to the rapid collapse of the Afghan government and the country’s takeover by the Taliban.

FBI Director Kash Patel and Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, both Trump appointees, said during a press conference on Thursday that the Biden administration had failed to conduct adequate background checks or vetting on Lakanwal before allowing him to enter the U.S. in 2021.

Neither official provided any evidence to support their assertion.

Patel said Rahmanullah Lakanwal, who had worked with U.S. government forces during the U.S. war in Afghanistan, was improperly allowed to enter the U.S. because “the prior administration made the decision to allow thousands of people into this country without doing a single piece of background checking or vetting.”

The program, which allowed more than 70,000 Afghan nationals into the U.S., according to a congressional report, was designed with vetting procedures, including by U.S. counter-terrorism and intelligence agencies. But the large-scale and rushed nature of the evacuations led critics to say the background checks were inefficient.