‘Civilizational Threat’: Pappert Links Alleged White House UFC Plot to Immigration Failures

Kaitlin Housler
Abraham Hermosillo Alvarez

Tom Pappert, lead reporter at The Tennessee Star, argued the alleged White House UFC Freedom 250 terror plot raises significant concerns about both illegal immigration and the growth of violent extremist networks operating online.

On Thursday, federal authorities announced charges against five men accused of conspiring to attack the UFC Freedom 250 event held on White House grounds.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) identified 31-year-old Abraham Hermosillo Alvarez of Omaha, Nebraska, as the alleged ringleader of the plot. According to DHS, Alvarez entered the U.S. on a B-2 visitor visa, overstayed it in 2001, and later received Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) status in 2014.

Pappert said during an appearance on The Michael Patrick Leahy Show that the case illustrates broader concerns surrounding immigration enforcement.

“I think this drives home the message that illegal immigration is a civilizational threat. We are allowing people into this country, we are giving them a special status that gives them privileges to remain who want to see our leaders, our people, our institutions killed, destroyed, and dead,” he said.

Pappert also suggested the alleged conspiracy may reflect a growing trend of ideologically motivated extremist groups operating online.

“I think that there’s something else going on here too though, because there seems to have been a very disturbed and unique ideology that these almost two dozen people shared,” he said. “And it seems very reminiscent to the ideology of, say, the Antioch High School shooter in Nashville, Tennessee.”

Pappert continued, “And I think what we could be seeing is a sort of evolution of this from attempts to attack schools and public places like that to political events and political candidates, or in this case, the President of the United States of America among this nihilist, violent, extremist, ideological disperse groups.”

Calling the situation a “big” concern, Pappert added, “It’s a massive concern that we have foreigners engaged in this activity, and I think we have a lot to be thankful for when it comes to the FBI and Kash Patel right now.”

According to federal authorities, investigators became aware of the potential threat around June 10 following a tip related to one of the suspects. The FBI subsequently conducted a multi-state investigation that resulted in arrests before the event took place.

Pappert noted reports that as many as 23 individuals participated in an encrypted group chat connected to the alleged conspiracy.

“The reports are that there were 23 people in this group chat that were all a part of this effort,” Pappert said. “Now, we don’t know how many of them were actually part of the planning, how many were willing to participate in the attack, but as I said, this seems to me to be the next evolution of a phenomenon that the FBI has been charting and the DOJ has been charting for at least three years now, and that is the emergence of, for lack of a better word, online cults that worship death and destruction and mayhem.”

“A lot of them seem to hold extremely bizarre beliefs, frankly, about Israel, Jewish occupation of government, and it seems to be coalescing around this idea that violence is the answer,” he added.

Pappert also discussed Alvarez’s DACA status, noting that supporters of the program have often argued that recipients are culturally American because they were brought to the U.S. as children.

“It is very interesting that…the argument with DACA was these are Americans. These are people who grew up in the United States of America. They’re just like you and me,” Pappert said. “And what do we find out? Now, this is just one individual. There [are] millions of DACA recipients out there. But this one individual does not appear to, in fact, have much in common with Americans.”

“It seems, according to the indictment, he wants us dead,” he added.

Watch:

– – –

Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network.

 

 

 

 

Related posts

Comments