Anxiety grows over ISIL recruits in U.S.

Kevin Johnson | USA TODAY

WASHINGTON—The Islamic State's claim of responsibility for the attacks in Paris has potentially dramatic implications in the U.S., where federal counterterrorism officials are investigating hundreds of suspected Islamic State recruits who they fear have been urged to take their fight to American streets, authorities have said.

Last month, FBI Director James Comey acknowledged an estimated 900 active investigations pending against suspected Islamic State-inspired operatives and other homegrown violent extremists across the country.

The majority of those inquiries involve suspected Islamic State recruits, officials said, who have either been radicalized through the terror group's aggressive social media campaign or have returned to the U.S. after being trained on battlefields in Syria and Iraq. Islamic State is also known by the acronyms ISIL and ISIS.

Comey has said that the number of inquiries has slowly climbed, largely due to the group's successful outreach to young, disaffected Americans.

"(Islamic State) is fueling an unprecedented tempo for law enforcement authorities combating the homegrown Islamist extremist threat,'' a House Homeland Security Committee threat assessment stated earlier this month, adding that almost 60 people have been arrested so far this year in ISIL-related cases.

Texas Rep. Michael McCaul, the Homeland Committee's Republican chairman, last week called the Islamist threat a "menace'' that is increasingly challenging the capacity of counterterrorism authorities.

"As this month's terror threat snapshot illustrates, our counterterrorism and law enforcement efforts continue to be strained by these threats,'' McCaul said. "With Europe accepting possibly up to 1 million (Syrian) refugees by year's end and ISIL vowing to exploit the refugee process, our nation's law enforcement and intelligence communities may soon be stretched as we deal with that crisis and our own Syrian refugee vetting for resettlement in the United States.''

Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson acknowledged McCaul's concerns.

"It is true that we're not going to know a whole lot about the Syrians that come forth in this (refugee) process,'' Johnson said last month. "That definitely is a challenge.''

Terrorism analyst Evan Kohlmann said that while there has been a rash of ISIL-related arrests across the country, the continuing threat in France is "many, many times greater than the U.S.''

"Many more French nationals have gone to fight as jihadists in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Afghanistan, and elsewhere than have Americans,'' Kohlmann said. "The American Muslim community has had far less problems with radicalization than the community in France, no doubt due at least in part to higher levels of xenophobia and the often-tense relationship between Muslims and non-Muslims there. Nor is France separated by vast oceans from these conflict zones, as is North America.''

Kohlmann said French jihadists tend to be better organized, armed, and connected than their comparatively diminutive American counterparts. Many (ISIL) cases in the U.S. have involved lone extremists who spend many hours online chatting with militants and who aspire to travel to a conflict zone, or are plotting to carry out their own act of violence in sympathy with the group. They do not tend to be the type of highly organized and coordinated hidden networks that were highly likely to have been behind the Paris attacks.''

U.S. law enforcement officials have sounded more ominous warnings over the growing numbers of suspected homegrown ISIL recruits.

Comey has been particularly vocal about the potential danger, indicating that earlier this year the bureau redirected "hundreds'' of investigators from criminal cases to deal with the growing national security threat.

"ISIL has used the used ubiquitous social media to break the model and push into the United States on the mobile devices of troubled souls in all 50 states a twin message: come or kill," Comey told a House panel last month. "Come to the so-called 'caliphate' … and if you can't come, kill where you are."

A measure of the government's concern was revealed earlier this week when federal prosecutors announced charges against an Ohio man. Terrance J. McNeil, 25 of Akron, who allegedly expressed his allegiance to the ISIL, was charged with calling for the killing of U.S. military members by posting the names and addresses of about 100 service members on social media.

Specifically, prosecutors allege McNeil in September re-posted a file titled, "Islamic State Hacking Division," which contained the names and addresses of service members described as "Target: United States Military.''

According to court documents, the file also included a directive to kill.

"Kill them in their own lands, behead them in their own homes, stab them to death as they walk their streets thinking that they are safe,'' the text states in part.

Prosecutors allege that McNeil had repeatedly professed his support for ISIL on social media.

"While we aggressively defend First Amendment rights, the individual arrested went far beyond free speech by reposting names and addresses of 100 U.S. service members, all with the intent to have them killed," Stephen D. Anthony, chief of the FBI's Cleveland Division, said this week.

Even as the Paris attacks continued to unfold Friday night, FBI officials throughout the U.S., were conferring with their local counterparts to discuss the potential implications for the U.S.

Johnson said there is no known related threat to the U.S. But law enforcement officials throughout the nation have upgraded security at transportation centers, sports stadiums and other highly-trafficked sites.

"We're not taking any chances,'' Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey said.