Obama's former DHS secretary sounds alarm on Iranian sleeper cells, calls it concern of 'highest magnitude'
Americans are being urged to remain vigilant following the U.S. bombing of nuclear sites in Iran over the weekend and a series of arrests involving Iranian nationals inside the United States.
The former Homeland Security Secretary under President Barack Obama is warning that the threat of terror sleeper cells on American soil is a major concern for law enforcement.
"The presence in this country of undocumented migrants or Iranian nationals who have links to Hezbollah, IRGC, is, in my judgment, a domestic law enforcement concern of the highest magnitude," said former DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson during an interview on "Fox & Friends," Wednesday.
Tom Homan Warns Iranian 'Sleeper Cells' Could Be Hiding In Us As Result Of Biden's Border Crisis
Following the strikes, the Department of Homeland Security released a memo warning of a "heightened threat environment across the United States" due to the involvement of the U.S. in the conflict between Israel and Iran. Iranian state television has also issued threats, stating that all American citizens or military personnel in the region became legitimate targets.
Hospitals In Sanctuary Cities Could Be Most Vulnerable To Iran Terror Attacks, Warns Expert
Read On The Fox News App
Earlier this week, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced the arrests of over a dozen Iranian undocumented nationals living in the U.S. Some of those arrested were accused of violent crimes such as domestic assault, drug offenses, and weapons possession. One individual had also served as a sniper in the Iranian army as recently as four years ago.
Johnson believes the threat may be larger than the recent arrests suggest and that more migrants may be seized in connection to Iran.
"That's not necessarily all of them," he said. "My educated speculation is that law enforcement has been tracking these individuals for a while in this country to follow leads, to see who they are in contact with."
Other officials have voiced similar concerns, with many linking the increased threat of sleeper cells to the Biden administration's more lenient border policies. Border czar Tom Homan told FOX Business that nearly 2,000 migrants slipped past law enforcement daily under the previous White House.
Ex-ice Chief Warns Biden's Border Crisis Likely Fueled Iranian Sleeper Threat In Us
Americans Vulnerable To Cyberattacks, Lone Wolf Threats In Wake Of Iranian Airstrikes: Former Fbi Agent
"We don't know who they are, where they came from, why they're here, but they got away," said Homan on Tuesday, going on to call it the "biggest national security vulnerability" the country has seen.
Besides Iranian attacks, Johnson noted that those with extremist ties could act independently in response to the growing tensions in the Middle East.
"Sleepers don't necessarily follow the direction from their sponsors," he said. "Somebody who's here in the United States who has links to the IRGC, to Hezbollah, may decide to take matters into their own hands."
The FBI has shifted some of its resources to boost cybersecurity and expand counterterrorism initiatives in response to the threat. Johnson emphasized that Americans should not panic and continue to live their lives as normal.
Instead, he urged the public to remain vigilant and report any suspicious activity to the authorities.
"'If you see something, say something' is still a valid public safety tool," he said. "It does make a difference."Original article source: Obama's former DHS secretary sounds alarm on Iranian sleeper cells, calls it concern of 'highest magnitude'
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
13 minutes ago
Senate struggle over Medicaid cuts threatens progress on Trump's big bill
WASHINGTON -- One key unsettled issue stalling progress on President Donald Trump's big bill in Congress is particularly daunting: How to cut billions from health care without harming Americans or the hospitals and others that provide care? Republicans are struggling to devise a solution to the health care problem their package has created. Already, estimates say 10.9 million more people would be without health coverage under the House-passed version of the bill. GOP senators have proposed steeper reductions, which some say go too far. 'The Senate cuts in Medicaid are far deeper than the House cuts, and I think that's problematic,' said GOP Sen. Susan Collins of Maine. Senators have been meeting behind closed doors and with Trump administration officials as they rush to finish up the big bill ahead of the president's Fourth of July deadline. Much of the package, with its tax breaks and bolstered border security spending, is essentially drafted. But the size and scope of healthcare cuts are among the toughest remaining issues. It's reminiscent of the summer during Trump's first term, in 2017, when Republicans struggled to keep their campaign promise to 'repeal and replace' the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, only to see the GOP splinter over the prospect of Americans losing health coverage. That legislation collapsed when then-Sen. John McCain famously cast a thumbs-down vote. Senate Majority Leader John Thune is determined to avoid that outcome, sticking to the schedule and pressing ahead with voting expected by the end of the week. 'This is a good bill and it's going to be great for our country,' Thune said Wednesday, championing its potential to unleash economic growth and put money in people's pockets. The changes to the federal health care programs, particularly Medicaid, were always expected to become a centerpiece of the GOP package, a way to offset the costs of providing tax breaks for millions of Americans. Without action from Congress, taxes would go up next year when current tax law expires. The House-passed bill achieved some $1.5 trillion in savings overall, a large part of it coming from changes to health care. The Medicaid program has dramatically expanded in the 15 years since Obamacare became law and now serves some 80 million Americans. Republicans say that's far too high, and they want to shrink the program back to a smaller size covering mainly poorer women and children. House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said Republicans are 'trying to take away healthcare from tens of millions of Americans.' Democrats are uniformly opposed to what they call the 'big, ugly bill.' Much of the health care cost savings would come from new 80-hour-a-month work requirements on those who receive Medicaid benefits, even as most recipients already work. But another provision, the so-called provider tax that almost all the states impose to some degree on hospitals and others that serve Medicaid patients, is drawing particular concern for potential cuts to rural hospitals. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., said several senators spoke up Wednesday during a private meeting indicating they were not yet ready to start voting. 'That'll depend if we land the plane on rural hospitals,' he said. States impose the taxes as a way to help fund Medicaid, largely by boosting the reimbursements they receive from the federal government. Critics decry the system as a type of 'laundering' but almost every state except Alaska uses it to help provide the health care coverage. The House-passed bill would freeze the provider taxes at current levels, while the Senate proposal goes deeper by reducing the tax that some states are able to impose. 'I know the states are addicted to it,' said Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan. But he added, 'Obviously the provider tax needs to go away.' But a number of GOP senators, and the hospitals and other medical providers in their states, are raising steep concerns that the provider tax changes would decimate rural hospitals. In a plea to lawmakers, the American Hospital Association said the cuts won't just affect those who get health coverage through Medicaid, but would further strain emergency rooms 'as they become the family doctor to millions of newly uninsured people.' 'And worse, some hospitals, especially those in rural communities, may be forced to close altogether,' said Rick Pollack, president and CEO of the hospital group. The Catholic Health Association of the United States noted in its own letter that Medicaid provides health insurance coverage for one in five people and nearly half of all children. 'The proposed changes to Medicaid would have devastating consequences, particularly for those in small towns and rural communities, where Medicaid is often the primary source of health care coverage,' said Sister Mary Haddad, the group's president and CEO. Trying to engineer a fix to the problem, senators are considering creating a rural hospital fund to help offset the lost Medicaid money. GOP senators circulated a proposal to pour $15 billion to establish a new rural hospital fund. But several senators said that's too high, while others said it's insufficient. Collins has proposed that the fund be set at $100 billion. 'It won't be that big, but there will be a fund,' Thune said. Hawley, who has been among those most outspoken about the health care cuts, said he's interested in the rural hospital fund but needs to hear more about how it would work. He has also raised concerns about a new $35 per service co-pay that could be charged to those with Medicaid, which is in both the House and Senate versions of the bill. 'Getting the fund is good. That's important, a step forward,' Hawley said. But he asked: 'How does the fund actually distribute the money? Who will get it to hospitals? ... Or is this just going to be something that exists on paper?' A new analysis from the White House Council of Economic Advisers estimates the package would result in up to $2.3 trillion in deficit reduction over 10 years, a markedly different assessment from other analyses. In contrast, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office's dynamic analysis of the House-passed measure estimates an increase in deficits by $2.8 trillion over the next decade.
Boston Globe
27 minutes ago
- Boston Globe
Trump picked a horrible time to crush electric cars
Just a few short months ago, American consumers had an appealing off-ramp: electric vehicles. EV sales pushed above 1.3 million vehicles in 2024. The future of cars was increasingly looking like it would be electric. Advertisement But since he took office, President Trump has been methodically stifling the EV market. He has issued orders Get The Gavel A weekly SCOTUS explainer newsletter by columnist Kimberly Atkins Stohr. Enter Email Sign Up He wants to gut EV charging infrastructure and has threatened to cancel tax credits that prompted many people to switch to an electric vehicle. He even says he plans to sell the Tesla he bought from former DOGE czar Elon Musk Faced with that hostility and the ever-shifting tariff landscape, Detroit automakers have Advertisement Meanwhile, plans to build EV battery plants — many in red states — are slowing down, potentially threatening future jobs. Even those that survive are shrinking. On Monday, Ford Motor gave journalists a tour of its All this is alarming to Ford, which has another headache: It is licensing lithium-ion battery technology from a Chinese company 'We don't want to back off on scaling, hiring, or training in an industry we need to be competitive in the future,' said Lisa Drake, Ford's vice president of technology platform programs and EV systems, Trump's attacks on EVs threaten to put the United States even further behind the rest of the world. Globally, analysts think For now, the main alternative to EVs are gas-powered hybrid-electric vehicles, which are expected to set records themselves this year, in part because Toyota has switched two of its best sellers, the Camry and the RAV4, to hybrids. Advertisement Those past spikes in gas prices have also led to jumps in the popularity of hybrids. I bought my first one in 2008, when gasoline in Michigan soared above $4 a gallon, and I'm now on my second. Hybrid sales so far this year Counting hybrids and EVs together, it could turn out that one in four vehicles sold this year is 'electrified,' as Toyota calls it. Already, For now, hybrids may be the compromise for environmentally minded consumers. But who knows: Maybe they'll appear on Trump's radar once he's unplugged EVs.
28 minutes ago
The US and Iran have had bitter relations for decades. After the bombs, a new chapter begins
WASHINGTON -- Now comes a new chapter in U.S.-Iran relations, whether for the better or the even worse. For nearly a half century, the world has witnessed an enmity for the ages — the threats, the plotting, the poisonous rhetoric between the 'Great Satan' of Iranian lore and the 'Axis of Evil' troublemaker of the Middle East, in America's eyes. Now we have a U.S. president saying, of all things, 'God bless Iran.' This change of tone, however fleeting, came after the intense U.S. bombing of Iranian nuclear-development sites this week, Iran's retaliatory yet restrained attack on a U.S. military base in Qatar and the tentative ceasefire brokered by President Donald Trump in the Israel-Iran war. The U.S. attack on three targets inflicted serious damage but did not destroy them, a U.S. intelligence report found, contradicting Trump's assertion that the attack 'obliterated' Iran's nuclear program. Here are some questions and answers about the long history of bad blood between the two countries: In the first blush of a ceasefire agreement, even before Israel and Iran appeared to be fully on board, Trump exulted in the achievement. 'God bless Israel,' he posted on social media. 'God bless Iran.' He wished blessings on the Middle East, America and the world, too. When it became clear that all hostilities had not immediately ceased after all, he took to swearing instead. 'We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don't know what the f— they're doing,' he said on camera. In that moment, Trump was especially critical of Israel, the steadfast U.S. ally, for seeming less attached to the pause in fighting than the country that has been shouting 'Death to America' for generations and is accused of trying to assassinate him. In two words, Operation Ajax. That was the 1953 coup orchestrated by the CIA, with British support, that overthrew Iran's democratically elected government and handed power to the shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The Western powers had feared the rise of Soviet influence and the nationalization of Iran's oil industry. The shah was a strategic U.S. ally who repaired official relations with Washington. But grievances simmered among Iranians over his autocratic rule and his bowing to America's interests. All of that boiled over in 1979 when the shah fled the country and the theocratic revolutionaries took control, imposing their own hard line. Profoundly. On Nov. 4, 1979, with anti-American sentiment at a fever pitch, Iranian students took 66 American diplomats and citizens hostage and held more than 50 of them in captivity for 444 days. It was a humiliating spectacle for the United States and President Jimmy Carter, who ordered a secret rescue mission months into the Iran hostage crisis. In Operation Eagle Claw, eight Navy helicopters and six Air Force transport planes were sent to rendezvous in the Iranian desert. A sand storm aborted the mission and eight service members died when a helicopter crashed into a C-120 refueling plane. Diplomatic ties were severed in 1980 and remain broken. Iran released the hostages minutes after Ronald Reagan's presidential inauguration on Jan. 20, 1981. That was just long enough to ensure that Carter, bogged in the crisis for over a year, would not see them freed in his term. No. But the last big one was at sea. On April 18, 1988, the U.S. Navy sank two Iranian ships, damaged another and destroyed two surveillance platforms in its largest surface engagement since World War II. Operation Praying Mantis was in retaliation against the mining of the USS Samuel B. Roberts in the Persian Gulf four days earlier. Ten sailors were injured and the explosion left a gaping hole in the hull. Not officially, but essentially. The U.S. provided economic aid, intelligence sharing and military-adjacent technology to Iraq, concerned that an Iranian victory would spread instability through the region and strain oil supplies. Iran and Iraq emerged from the 1980-1988 war with no clear victor and the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives, while U.S.-Iraq relations fractured spectacularly in the years after. An example of U.S.-Iran cooperation of sorts — an illegal, and secret, one until it wasn't. Not long after the U.S. designated Iran a state sponsor of terrorism in 1984 — a status that remains — it emerged that America was illicitly selling arms to Iran. One purpose was to win the release of hostages in Lebanon under the control of Iran-backed Hezbollah. The other was to raise secret money for the Contra rebels in Nicaragua in defiance of a U.S. ban on supporting them. President Ronald Reagan fumbled his way through the scandal but emerged unscathed — legally if not reputationally. Only four: Iran, North Korea, Cuba and Syria. The designation makes those countries the target of broad sanctions. Syria's designation is being reviewed in light of the fall of Bashar Assad's government. From President George W. Bush in his 2002 State of the Union address. He spoke five months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the year before he launched the invasion of Iraq on the wrong premise that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. He singled out Iran, North Korea and Saddam's Iraq and said: 'States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world.' In response, Iran and some of its anti-American proxies and allies in the region took to calling their informal coalition an Axis of Resistance at times. Some, like Hezbollah and Hamas, are degraded due to Israel's fierce and sustained assault on them. In Syria, Assad fled to safety in Moscow after losing power to rebels once tied to al-Qaida but now cautiously welcomed by Trump. In Yemen, Houthi rebels who have attacked commercial ships in the Red Sea and pledged common cause with Palestinians have been bombed by the U.S. and Britain. In Iraq, armed Shia factions controlled or supported by Iran still operate and attract periodic attacks from the United States. In 2015, President Barack Obama and other powers struck a deal with Iran to limit its nuclear development in return for the easing of sanctions. Iran agreed to get rid of an enriched uranium stockpile, dismantle most centrifuges and give international inspectors more access to see what it was doing. Trump assailed the deal in his 2016 campaign and scrapped it two years later as president, imposing a "maximum pressure" campaign of sanctions. He argued the deal only delayed the development of nuclear weapons and did nothing to restrain Iran's aggression in the region. Iran's nuclear program resumed over time and, according to inspectors, accelerated in recent months. Trump's exit from the nuclear deal brought a warning from Hassan Rouhani, then Iran's president, in 2018: 'America must understand well that peace with Iran is the mother of all peace. And war with Iran is the mother of all wars.' In January 2020, Trump ordered the drone strike that killed Qassem Soleimani, Iran's top commander, when he was in Iraq. Then Iran came after him, according to President Joe Biden's attorney general, Merrick Garland. Days after Trump won last year's election, the Justice Department filed charges against an Iranian man believed to still be in his country and two alleged associates in New York. 'The Justice Department has charged an asset of the Iranian regime who was tasked by the regime to direct a network of criminal associates to further Iran's assassination plots against its targets, including President-elect Donald Trump," Garland said. Now, Trump is seeking peace at the table after ordering bombs dropped on Iran, and offering blessings. It is potentially the mother of all turnarounds.
