The Department of Homeland Security’s top official is slated to hold a press conference Monday at a controversial Muslim center that was reportedly raided by federal agents as part of an investigation into a terror organization.
Jeh Johnson, DHS secretary, will speak Monday afternoon at the Virginia-based All Dulles Area Muslim Society, also known as the ADAMS Center. The secretary will be joined by the center’s religious director, Imam Mohamed Magid, who serves as a leading member of an Islamic organization long suspected of having ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas.
Johnson will speak at the ADAMS Center along with Magid about efforts to protect the Muslim community from hate speech in the wake of a deadly mass shooting in San Bernardino, California, that was allegedly carried out by devotees of the Islamic State terror group, according to an online invitation for the event and information from DHS.
"These horrific acts [in California] moreover should NOT be permitted to vilify and stereotype the peaceful and law-abiding Muslim, Sikh and other minority communities in America," reads an invite for the event issued by the ADAMS Center. "We must all work together to prevent hate crimes and intimidation."
The invitation goes on to reference a fatwa, or religious edict, issued by the ADAMS Center condemning terrorism.
The event comes just days after several Democratic lawmakers attended a prayer service at another Virginia-area mosque that has been accused of acting as a front for Hamas and that served as the home of an al Qaeda terror leader.
Federal agents raided the ADAMS Center during a 2002 terrorism investigation into organizations tied to the Muslim Brotherhood, according to court documents published by the Clarion Project.
"A government affidavit said the group is ‘suspected of providing support to terrorists, money laundering, and tax evasion through the use of a variety of for-profit companies and ostensible charitable entities under their control, most of which are located at [the ADAM Center’s offices at] 555 Grove Street, Herndon, V.A.," according to the report.
Additionally, several accused terrorists have allegedly spent time at the ADAMS Center, including Farooque Ahmed, who was arrested for planning to bomb the Washington-area subway.
Magid serves as the president of the Islamic Society of North America, which has been accused of having ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, according to federal court filings published by the Investigative Project on Terrorism, a research and news organization.
The Islamic society also was listed as an "unindicted co-conspirator" in a federal terrorism case investigating U.S. Muslim organizations attempting to finance Hamas.
Muslim Brotherhood members reportedly founded the Islamic society, which has further been accused of hosting radical preachers at its events, according to research performed by the Investigative Project.
Magid met with President Barack Obama at the White House in 2015, along with several of Muslim leaders accused of having ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser to Obama, has also praised the Islamic society.
Patrick Poole, a terrorism analyst and national security reporter who has written about the ADAMS Center, called the DHS secretary’s scheduled appearance concerning.
"The ADAMS Center has been a documented hub of extremism that even in the most generous interpretation has a poor record of dealing with terrorists in their midst," Poole said. "It was no coincidence that the Attorney General of the United States was canceling outreach meetings due solely to the presence of Mohamed Magid."
The fatwa mentioned in the invitation to the event was signed by at least one individual "who is currently in prison in Egypt convicted of terrorism charges," Poole noted.
Meanwhile, Congress is set to approve this week a massive yearly spending bill that will fund the Obama administration’s immigration priorities.
Lawmakers critical of the spending bill say that it amounts to a "blank check" for the administration to permit some 10,000 Syrian refugees into America and boost immigration priorities in general.
"As currently written, this year's appropriations bills—which will be combined into a catch-all 'omnibus' by December 11th—amount to a blank check for the President to carry out his refugee resettlement plans," Sen. Jeff Sessions (R., Ala.), chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest, said in a statement.
"Not only will the president be allowed to bring in the 85,000 refugees he has announced on top of current record immigration levels, but this will include at least 10,000 refugees from Syria who will subsequently be able to bring in their foreign relatives," Sessions said. "All refugees are eligible for lifetime government assistance and can draw funds from Social Security and Medicare at Americans' expense."
Somewhere near 700,000 lifetime residency cards will be granted to migrants from Muslim-majority nations during the next five years, according to Sessions, who warned that this could pose a terrorism risk.
"Terror groups have demonstrated that they will recruit from among this inflow," he said. "We have already identified nearly 30 foreign-born individuals charged or convicted of terrorism offenses in the last year—investigations which required the deployment of vast manpower, financial and legal resources."