Samy Hamzeh, now 25, is the son of Palestinian immigrants. He was born in New Jersey, but when Hamzeh was three, the family moved to Jordan, his parents’ home. In 2011, the 19-year-old Hamzeh returned to the United States. He settled in Milwaukee, a city with a small Palestinian community that traces its roots to the 1960s.

Hamzeh was joined by his parents and younger sister two years later. They lived together in an apartment, and the burden of supporting the family fell on Hamzeh.

He took odd jobs, working as a delivery driver, bus boy, gym trainer and valet while taking classes at a community college. He had no criminal record and wasn’t fervently religious. Defense documents say he used hashish. Hamzeh handed his paychecks over to his father, the filings say, taking only a small allowance in return.

Hamzeh appeared on the FBI’s radar on Sept. 16, 2015, when a friend reported him to the agency’s Milwaukee office.

Court documents say the friend told agents Hamzeh “was talking about traveling to Egypt for terrorist training, obtaining a commercial driver’s license to conduct a terrorist attack in the name of ISIS [Islamic State], and that he’d obtained a .45 caliber pistol.”

The Islamic State was on the retreat in Iraq and Syria, but concern remained high in the United States about the risk of Muslim Americans joining the terrorist group. Believing they had a would-be jihadist in their sights, agents opened an investigation. They asked Hamzeh’s friend to start recording his conversations with him.

The friend, identified as “Steve” in court filings, reported within a week that Hamzeh had “changed his mind about doing stupid things.” Still, the FBI brought in a more experienced informant a few days later: “Mike.”

Both Mike and Steve are of Palestinian descent, according to several members of the Milwaukee Muslim community. Defense records indicate Steve did not have work authorization papers. It’s unclear whether the two were paid, but the FBI routinely compensates informants. The agency keeps a roster of 15,000 paid and unpaid informants, according to a budget request to Congress.

Defense filings depict Mike as the more aggressive of the pair. Planted in the same restaurant where Hamzeh waited tables, he befriended Hamzeh and tried to “steer the conversation toward extremism and guns,” defense filings assert.

Within days, he introduced Hamzeh to guns, showing him and Steve his pistol and suggesting they all go to a shooting range.

As an informant’s quarry, Hamzeh did not disappoint.

In conversations reported or recorded that October, November and December, Hamzeh told Steve and Mike things that even his defense team termed “unsettling.”

He talked about traveling to Palestine to “buy a weapon and shoot civilians or military personnel.” He vowed to join the terrorist group Hamas and “strap on a suicide vest to prove his loyalty.” He planned a martyrdom mission to Israel where he would “get a machine gun and fire it randomly” at soldiers and civilians.

At least three times, Hamzeh told Steve and Mike that he wanted to buy a gun.

According to his lawyers, all this was little more than bluster. Hamzeh “was just making up stories to impress or entertain his friends,” they wrote in a filing seeking bail.

To prosecutors, however, it showed Hamzeh was serious about a mass terrorist attack.