An ISIS plot to take advantage of the vulnerability of the U.S.-Mexico border and send fighters to the United States has been revealed by a repentant ISIS fighter in custody, according to Homeland Security Today.
The nonprofit media outlet recently published a report detailing an interview with a Canadian ISIS member imprisoned in Syria, who said ISIS organizers had been planning to have members travel to the U.S. and penetrate the U.S.-Mexico border.
“They were going to move me to the Mexican side [of the U.S. southern border] via Puerto Rico,” Abu Henricki said, according to Homeland Security Today’s June 3 report. “This was mastermind[ed] by a guy in America. Where he is, I do not know. That information, the plan came from someone from the New Jersey state from America. I was going to take a boat [from Puerto Rico] into Mexico. He was going to smuggle me in. I don’t know where I’d end up.”
Captured ISIS fighter admits plot to send terrorists through U.S.-Mexico border https://t.co/mtZgBCTamF
— TheBlaze (@theblaze) June 7, 2019
“Please be advised, I was not willing to do it,” Henricki added. “But this is one of their wicked, one of the plans that they had, and which I would like to think I foiled the plan by not being part of it.”
Henricki gave an interview on May 12 to the International Center for the Study of Violent Extremism (ICSVE) during which he shared the plot. When he refused to play a part in the plan, ISIS detained him and put him in a prison and tortured him.
“There’s something that’s kind of like was playing in the mind in the past a little while now,” he said, according to the report. “I have been contacted by two organizations from the U.S. and Canada to help stop foreign attacks. The one guy in Canada wants to take me under his wing. Another one [the American intel] wants me to go around to people I met, Americans from Texas [and recruit them as ISIS informants].”
As Henricki opened up and the interview continued, he ultimately shared details about the ISIS plot to “penetrate the U.S. borders to mount financial attacks on the U.S.”
In 2016, a member of ISIS intelligence had reached out across networks, and word got to Henricki.
“They, what they will have, what they wanted to do, basically, is they wanted to do financial attacks. Financial attacks to cripple the [U.S.] economy,” he explained. “Apparently, they have the contacts or whatever papers they can get to a false ID, false passports [to send me out for this kind of attack]. They have their system of doing it. So that’s maybe the way that I could have gone out with other individuals. It wasn’t me alone. They were sending you to Puerto Rico and from Puerto Rico [to Mexico].”
“One reason while I was also put in [ISIS] prison in 2016, I was asked to leave [ISIS] to go to America because I’m from that area. Cause they wanted [and] planned to do something and I refused. I refused to do it. That is why also I’m put into [ISIS] prison and been tortured,” he added.
