As I reported here at PJ Media on Friday night, multiple law enforcement agencies were investigating a series of shooting targeting police in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania’s state capital, Friday afternoon by 51-year-old Ahmed Amin El-Mofty.
One Pennsylvania State Trooper was injured during one of the shootings, and El-Mofty was later killed during a shootout with police.
Now a Department of Homeland Security official has confirmed that the shootings targeting police by El-Mofty were an act of terrorism.
Last night, Acting DHS Press Secretary Tyler Houlton posted a statement on Twitter not only confirming Friday’s incident was a terror attack, but also identifying that El-Mofty’s naturalization as a U.S. citizen came through chain migration.
The Department of Homeland Security can confirm the suspect involved in a terror attack in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and another suspect arrested on terror-related money laundering charges were both beneficiaries of extended family chain migration.
Ahmed Amin El-Mofty was a was a naturalized U.S. citizen who was admitted to the United States from Egypt on a family-based immigrant visa. El-Mofty was killed yesterday in a shootout after allegedly opening fire and targeting police at multiple locations in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The long chain of migration that led to the suspect’s admission to the United States was initiated years ago by a distant relative of the suspect. One of the most recent links in that chain was an extended family member admitted into the United States from Egypt on an F24 visa.
Houlton corrects earlier information that El-Mofty had come from Turkey.
El-Mofty’s estranged wife, who is also from Egypt, believed he moved overseas after their separation in 2011, she told local media yesterday. Early reports indicated that El-Mofty had recently made a trip to the Middle East.
Neighbors also told media a long stream of men would visit the Camp Hill home, and that immigration authorities had raided the property last year.
When one neighbor was asked whether he could identify El-Mofty coming to the home, he replied, “There’s so many guys coming in an out it’s impossible to say.”
The terror attack happened on the same day that Jalil Ibn Ameer Aziz was being sentenced in federal court in Harrisburg for material support for ISIS. Aziz received a 12-year prison sentence. So far there is no confirmation that Friday’s attack was related to the sentencing hearing.
This is not the first jihadist-related terror attack in the Keystone State.
In January 2016, Edward Archer approached a Philadelphia police car and opened fire, striking Officer Jesse Harnett. Harnett was able to return fire, and Archer was arrested a block away from where the shooting happened.
He claimed he had acted “in the name of Islam” and had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State.
Archer, too, had made trips to the Middle East. He had visited Mecca, and then spent much of 2012 living in Egypt.
While the FBI had investigated the Philadelphia shooting by Archer as an act of terrorism, he was charged in state, not federal, court on attempted murder and gun-related charges.
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