Roughly 900 investigations into homegrown terrorists – many with ties to ISIS – underway across U.S.: Homeland Security

BY RICH SCHAPIRO
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Wednesday, November 18, 2015, 7:51 PM

JIM COLE/AP
“The fact that they were able to get assault weapons — which are not available in France — attack multiple sites, carry it out with perfect synchronization and not be detected shows a level of sophistication that we did not think ISIS had,” Rep. Pete King (R-N.Y.) told the Daily News.


A group of disaffected youths, quietly radicalized in some out-of-the-way suburb, launch a bloody attack on an American shopping mall.

That nightmare scenario is at the heart of a sweeping U.S. intelligence effort to smoke out potential ISIS converts in all 50 states.

Roughly 900 investigations into homegrown terrorists, the vast majority with ties to ISIS, are underway from Alabama to Wyoming, according to a recent report by the Department of Homeland Security.

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The dragnet has already produced results — 71 suspects have been arrested or charged in ISIS-related cases since 2014, the report says.

But the complexity of the large-scale attack in Paris has rattled anti-terror experts.

“The fact that they were able to get assault weapons — which are not available in France — attack multiple sites, carry it out with perfect synchronization and not be detected shows a level of sophistication that we did not think ISIS had,” Rep. Pete King (R-N.Y.) told the Daily News.

The wannabe jihadists rounded up in the U.S. over the past year were a diverse bunch — Americans, immigrants, even a handful of newly arrived refugees.

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There was a pizza delivery guy in Texas, a U.S. Air Force veteran in New Jersey and a homemaker in Virginia.

Six Bosnian immigrants — three naturalized citizens, the others with refugee or legal resident status — were rounded up in February on charges of sending money and military equipment to ISIS fighters abroad.

A portrait has emerged of those most likely to fall under ISIS’ spell.

Most ISIS sympathizers arrested in the U.S. were American citizens in their early 20s, according to a study by the Center on National Security.

A third were late converts to Islam, and roughly 15% were women.

Eight out of 10 suspects were recruited via social media.

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