On August 8, 2013, Jordan Nicole Furr met with someone she almost certainly thought was a friend, most likely somewhere near Austin, Texas. The subject at hand was her husband, Michael Wolfe, who also went by the name Faruq. “[H]e just wants to hop into Syria. He’s just ready to die for his deen,” Furr said—using an Arabic word for faith or religion—according to a criminal complaint filed by the FBI. “He’s ready to die for someone. For something.”

Unwittingly, Furr was speaking with an undercover FBI agent, one of two involved in a sting operation against her and her husband. During the next ten months, Wolfe and Furr repeatedly talked to the two agents in person and over the phone, concocting a plan to travel to Syria and fight jihad. By July 2014, Michael Wolfe would be arrested for material support of terrorism: specifically, attempting to go to Syria to join the Islamic State (ISIS).

James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, recently said that around 180 people have attempted or succeeded in traveling from the United States to Syria, though not all have joined militant groups. Wolfe is among the failed attempts: at least 26 Muslims who have been arrested in the United States for trying to travel abroad to join a militant group in recent years, according a report from the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security. Most of them were allegedly attempting to get to Syria to join ISIS; others, to join Al Qaeda affiliates in Syria or Yemen.

U.S. officials regularly tout the dangers of domestic terrorists and lone wolves. “Homegrown violent extremists continue to pose the most likely threat to the homeland,” Clapper told a Senate committee in February. FBI Directory James Comey echoed that line when addressing another Congressional committee: “The threat from homegrown violent extremists is of particular concern.” Media tend to repeat those claims on face value. An ABC report on Wolfe’s paraphrases unnamed law enforcement officials who posit that “young men and women could possibly return home [from Syria], freshly trained in deadly operations, and unleash havoc on the homeland.”

Homegrown. Homeland. The FBI wants you to remember where it’s fighting this battle. The Bureau has evolved from an agency focused on law enforcement to one focused on counterterrorism, which now commands $3.3 billion annually, or 40 percent of the total operating budget, according to a 2014 report from Human Rights Watch. Busts like Wolfe's help the Bureau justify the billions spent on preventing terrorist attacks.