An Iraqi national, accused of plotting to assassinate former President George W. Bush, sought asylum from President Joe Biden’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) while overstaying and violating the terms of his visitor visa, the Department of Justice (DOJ) confirms.
Shihab Ahmed Shihab Shihab, a 52-year-old national from Iraq, has been arrested and charged with aiding and abetting a plot to murder Bush with the help of Islamic State (ISIS) operatives that he planned to smuggle across the United States-Mexico border.
Shihab had allegedly bragged about smuggling two Hezbollah terrorists into the U.S. for $100,000. Likewise, he claimed to have helped murder American citizens in Iraq from 2003 to 2006.
According to DOJ prosecutors, Shihab first arrived in the U.S. in September 2020 on a B-1/B-2 visitor visa. In March 2021, Shihab filed a claim for asylum with Biden’s DHS in an attempt to permanently remain in the U.S. while overstaying his visitor visa, which is only valid for 180 days.
DOJ prosecutors also allege that Shihab seemingly violated the terms of his visitor visa by holding jobs at restaurants in the Columbus, Ohio, and Indianapolis, Indiana, areas.
While in the U.S., Shihab is accused of accepting tens of thousands of dollars in October and December 2021 from an individual who he believed was an ISIS operative wanting to be smuggled across the southern border. The operative was an undercover FBI agent.
Today, there are anywhere from five to six million illegal aliens who first arrived on visas to the U.S. but have since overstayed their visas and have not self-deported. As Breitbart News has previously reported, seven of the 19 September 11, 2001, hijackers overstayed their visas before or at the time of the terrorist attacks.
The last available DHS data for visa overstays, from 2019, found that in a single year more than 676,000 foreign nationals overstayed their visas. The federal government has yet to complete a full biometric entry/exit system that would track all visa overstays and deport them from the U.S. if they have violated the terms of their visas.
Since Biden took office in January 2021, 42 illegal aliens on the FBI Terrorist Watch List or No-Fly List have been apprehended at the southern border. In April 2021, two illegal aliens from Yemen arrived at the border. Both were on the Terrorism Watch List and the No-Fly List.
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, during a congressional hearing in April, could not say definitively that none of those 42 illegal aliens on the FBI Terrorist Watch List or No-Fly List apprehended at the border had been released into the U.S. interior.
