US won’t allow ‘atmosphere of fear’ to prevail after deadly New Orleans terror attack, says Alejandro Mayorkas

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said Thursday the United States won’t allow an “atmosphere of fear” to prevail after a deadly terror attack in New Orleans on Wednesday killed 14 people and injured dozens more.

The attack suspect, Shamsud-Din Jabbar, was an Army veteran and U.S. citizen from Texas who was killed by police in the early morning hours of the new year after driving a truck into a crowd of holiday revelers.

“This does appear to be an individual, a U.S. citizen, radicalized to violence by a foreign terrorist ideology, specifically the ISIS ideology,” said Mayorkas on “Your World.” “This is a phenomenon, a phenomenon of homegrown violent extremists that we have seen develop and emerge over the past ten years.”

Officials said an ISIS flag was recovered from the Ford pickup truck Jabbar used to mow down people in the French Quarter.

Christopher Raia, the deputy assistant director of the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division, said in a press conference Thursday that Jabbar posted videos online as he drove from Houston to New Orleans proclaiming his support for ISIS. 

“This investigation is only a little more than 24 hours old, and we have no indication at this point that anyone else was involved in this attack other than Shamsud-Din Bahar Jabbar,” said Raia.

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Mayorkas said ISIS’ goal is to have Americans “live in fear” but American democracy and its way of life “must prevail.”

“We will continue to enjoy and flourish in our democratic way of life and not allow an atmosphere of fear to prevail and therefore have ISIS’s goal succeed. We will not allow that to occur,” he told Fox News anchor Sandra Smith.

Smith pressed Mayorkas on the number of terror watchlist encounters at the southern border under the Biden administration and why more wasn’t done earlier on to curb the number of people illegally crossing into the country.

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Mayorkas said the men and women of U.S. law enforcement work daily to “ensure the safety and security of the American people” and screen individuals who pose a threat to public safety and national security. 

“Whatever the nature of the threat, those who pose a threat to the American people are our highest priority for law enforcement action as our laws provide. And we enforce and execute those laws every single day,” he added.