The US Homeland Security secretary on Sunday seized on a new threat of attacks against western shopping centres by Islamist terrorists to pressure Congress to avert a partial shutdown of his department and agree to a funding deal.

Jeh Johnson said a propaganda video released by al-Shabaab on Saturday calling for strikes on the Mall of America in Minnesota, Oxford Street and two Westfield malls in London, and Canada’s West Edmonton Mall, showed “all the more reason why I need a budget”.

“It’s absurd that we’re even having this conversation about Congress’s inability to fund homeland security in these challenging times,” Johnson told CNN. On ABC, he said “it’s imperative that we get it resolved”, adding that senators and members of the House were each blaming those in the other chamber for the impasse.

Conservative Republicans in Congress are refusing to pass a budget for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) unless it includes measures to roll back Barack Obama’s executive actions that would protect millions of undocumented immigrants from being deported. Last week, House speaker John Boehner said he was prepared to let DHS funding lapse.

The agency’s $40bn budget is due to expire on Friday. Johnson said a failure to pass a new budget would mean 30,000 of his employees would be furloughed and “frontline” staff would be forced to work without pay.

“I’m hoping someone will exercise leadership,” he told CNN.

Johnson said 80% of the staff of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), who could be needed to deal with continuing extreme winter weather conditions, would also be furloughed, and grants to state and local law enforcement agencies would “grind to a halt”.

Tom Ridge, a Homeland Security secretary under President George W Bush and a former Republican governor of Pennsylvania, told CNN Republicans in the Senate should pass a “clean bill” funding the department and deal with immigration separately.

Lindsey Graham, the Republican senior senator for South Carolina who is considering a run for president in 2016, warned his colleagues that they would “add gasoline to the fire” of what he called Obama’s failings on national security policy if they caused a shutdown.

“If we don’t fund homeland security, we will be blamed as a party,” Graham told ABC.

The 77-minute video was released online by the media wing of al-Shabaab, the Somali-based affiliate of al-Qaida. It urged followers to carry out attacks on “American and Jewish-owned” shopping centres similar to the siege at the Westgate mall in Nairobi, Kenya, in September 2013, in which 67 people were killed and more than 175 wounded by four gunmen.

“We call upon our Muslim brothers, particularly those in the west, to answer the call of Allah and target the disbelievers wherever they are,” a black man in a military-style jacket whose face was covered by a headscarf said at the end of the video.



The man went on to suggest an attack on the Mall of America, the biggest shopping centre in the US. Map coordinates for the mall were displayed on screen. The mall is a prominent feature of the Minneapolis-St Paul metropolitan area, which is home to the country’s largest population of Somali immigrants. Several men are known to have travelled from the region to the Middle East and Africa in recent years to fight with Islamist militants.

A statement emailed by a spokeswoman said Mall of America bosses were aware of the video and had implemented extra security measures.

“We will continue to monitor events with the help of federal, state and local law enforcement agencies,” said the statement. “As always, we take any potential threat seriously and respond appropriately.”

The video also proposed strikes on Oxford Street, London’s best-known retail centre, as well as Westfield malls in Stratford and White City. It singled out as another target the West Edmonton Mall in Alberta, Canada, which is the largest shopping mall in North America.

“What would be the implications of such an attack?” the narrator asked. “One could only imagine.”

Asked how seriously he was taking the new threat, Johnson told CNN: “I’m very concerned about the serious potential threat of independent actors here in the United States.”

“Any time a terrorist organisation calls for an attack on a specific place, we’ve got to take that seriously.”

Johnson said additional security would be protecting the shopping centre in Minnesota, where thousands of shoppers were expected on Sunday.

“I would say that if anyone is planning to go to the Mall of America today, they’ve got to be particularly careful,” he said.