The FBI’s arrest of several individuals in Michigan, preventing what the FBI director, Kash Patel, called “a potential terrorist attack” over Halloween weekend, highlights rising concerns about terrorists living among us. 

While it’s not clear yet how advanced the planning was, Attorney General Pam Bondi describes the Michigan case as an “ISIS-linked terror plot,” and the defendants appeared Monday in federal court.

The Michigan case follows the arrest in October of 34 year-old Mahmoud Amin Ya’qub al-Muhtadi. The Lafayette, Louisiana, resident, who arrived in America in September 2024 during the Biden administration, was apprehended in October 2025. He faces charges for his alleged participation in the massacres on October 7, 2023 by Hamas against Israel. 

The criminal complaint in United States vs. al-Muhtadi describes Mr. al-Muhtadi as an operative of the Gaza-based National Resistance Brigades, the paramilitary branch of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine. 

The Front is a Specially Designated Global Terrorist Organization, per America’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, and had also, though only briefly, been listed by the State Department in the late 1990s as a Foreign Terrorist Organization.  

The criminal complaint recounts how Mr. al-Muhtadi, on the morning of October 7, took up arms, gathered other fighters and coordinated ammunition before heading out to infiltrate Israel  “with the intention of assisting in Hamas’s terrorist attack.”

Evidence, including cellular data, places Mr. al-Muhtadi early that day in the vicinity of Kibbutz Kfar Aza where more than 60 people, including children and babies, were slaughtered and tortured, and nineteen others were abducted. 

Before the October 7 attacks, Mr. al-Muhtadi appears to have been senior enough in his organization to have trained younger operatives. He was also close to a National Resistance Brigades leader who was “engaged with Hamas’ most senior leadership,” the complaint states, and with whom Mr. al-Muhtadi posed in pictures. 

Based on an October 7 recorded conversation, the accused stated:  “If things go the way they should, Syria will take part, Lebanon will take part… and it’s going to be a third world war.” This statement echoes the assessment of Hamas’s mastermind of the October 7 attacks, Yahya Sinwar, that a regional war would ensue which would unite Israel’s enemies to attempt to destroy the Jewish state.

Mr. al-Muhtadi’s statement could also infer that he was high enough in his organization to know about a plan reserved for only a selected few. 

No details regarding Mr. al-Muhtadi’s role on the ground at Kfar Aza or other places in Israel on October 7 were disclosed, but the complaint mentions that he lived in Gaza until March 2024, and resided at Cairo when he filed his immigrant visa application to come to America in June 2024. 

On September 12, 2024, he landed at Dallas, Texas. Mr. al-Muhtadi’s driver’s license listed an address at Tulsa, Oklahoma, where he was living as of May 2025. 

Last February, Mr. al-Muhtadi posted pictures of a gun on social media. Other pictures depict him apparently handling the same gun from inside his Tulsa apartment. 

Mr. al-Muhtadi’s next apparent stop was Lafayette in the Pelican State, where he was working in a local restaurant through late September. 

As this is an ongoing criminal investigation, many facts and details about the case have not been disclosed, and many questions remain unanswered. Starting with: what was he doing in America? 

Why did he move, first to Oklahoma, and later onto Louisiana? Why did he buy a gun? Who was he in contact with in America? Who knew about his role in the October 7 attacks? 

Last but not least: how did someone who applied for an immigrant visa in late June, travel to America in September of that same year? Who, and why, was his visa application expedited and apparently left unchecked?  

Ten days ago, Senator Tom Cotton urged the Department of Homeland Secretary to scrutinize all visas issued through high-risk countries during the Biden administration, with a focus on potential affiliations with Hamas and other terror groups. 

Mr. Cotton’s letter also mentioned that, since October 7, 2023,  “thousands of visa applications from Palestinians have been processed through Egypt, often without adequate review of digital footprints or terrorist watchlist cross-checks.” 

The subtext of Mr. Cotton’s inquiry — viewed along with the arrests in Louisiana and Michigan — is: How many other potential terrorists are roaming freely and undetected among us right now?