Terrorism
Lebanese migrant captured at border admits to Hezbollah terror ties, talked about making bomb in New York
Basel Bassel Ebbadi revealed in an interview with agents that he had "trained with Hezbollah for seven years and served as an active member monitoring the location of weapons for another four years.”
March 18, 2024 9:30am
Updated: March 19, 2024 7:39am
A Lebanese migrant who was detained while trying to secretly cross the border admitted that he is a member of the terrorist group Hezbollah and that he hoped to reach New York to “make a bomb,” the New York Post reported.
Basel Bassel Ebbadi, 22, was detained by Border Patrol on March 9 near El Paso, Texas, and revealed in an interview with agents that he had “trained with Hezbollah for seven years and served as an active member monitoring the location.” of weapons for another four years.
“I'm going to try to make a bomb,” Ebbadi added while in custody, quoted in a Border Patrol document obtained by The Post.
Ebbadi later said he was trying to flee Lebanon and Hamas because he “didn't want to kill people,” saying that “once you're in, you can never get out,” according to internal U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) documents.
Ebbadi's training with Hezbollah apparently focused on "Jihad" and killing people "who were not Muslims," he said.
The Lebanese man did not have any documents when he entered the United States and told authorities he was robbed “with a knife” in Costa Rica, according to the ICE documents obtained by the Post.
He also confessed to previously using a fake identity and birthdate in Sweden, Ecuador where he says his father lives earlier this year. He may have also done the same thing in Panama.
He said he had originally hoped to travel to New York and then relocate around the United States.
Ebbadi was placed in isolation and held for an interview with Secret Tactical Terrorism Response Teams (TTRT) for making “terrorist threats to staff.”
Border Patrol documents suggest that Ebbadi will be deported out of the United States, but it is not clear where he will be sent.
Border agents recorded 172 encounters with migrants whose names appear on the terrorist watch list at the northern and southern borders in fiscal year 2023, nearly double the number in 2022, when only 98 encounters were recorded.
So far in the first four months of fiscal year 2024, 59 people have been detained, according to federal data.
