Image: Jihad Watch
An 18-year-old Egyptian student at George Mason University in Virginia, charged with multiple terrorism offenses linked to a mass casualty plot targeting Israel’s consulate in New York, has been added to the Center for Immigration Studies' National Security Vetting Failures Database. This latest entry brings the database's total number of analyzed failures to 50.
The Center initially published the database in March 2023 to highlight ongoing government vetting failures and ensure these issues remain a priority for lawmakers, oversight committees, the media, and homeland security professionals. According to a report titled “Learning from Our Mistakes,” the goal is to encourage process reforms and prevent these failures from fading from public focus.
Abdullah Ezzeldin Taha Mohamed Hassan was arrested by the FBI on December 17, 2024, for allegedly planning a mass casualty attack on the Israeli consulate in New York. His case is currently pending in the Eastern District of Virginia.
Hassan, an Egyptian national, entered the U.S. as a juvenile in July 2022 and lived in Falls Church, Virginia. However, as of January 2025, the type of visa he used to enter the country has not been publicly disclosed.
Given his age at the time, he may have entered with family members on a temporary visa, such as a tourist or student exchange visa, or possibly on an F-1 student visa, as there is no age restriction for these. The U.S. State Department would have conducted an in-person interview since Hassan was over 14 years old at the time of his entry.
Regardless of how Hassan entered the country, evidence suggests he was already radicalized as an Islamic extremist. This could have been discovered through a review of his online social media activity. According to court documents, within weeks or months of his arrival, his social media posts flagged FBI attention, prompting agents to interview him due to his online support for ISIS.
Although no charges were filed in 2022, Hassan was soon placed in deportation proceedings by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). These proceedings were still pending when he enrolled in George Mason University to study information technology, likely in 2023 or 2024.
Hassan remained an active student during the summer and fall of 2024 while FBI agents continued to investigate him. According to an affidavit, agents observed him on the GMU campus during this time.
Once again, Hassan’s social media activity had caught the FBI’s attention. Undercover agents began monitoring him after discovering that he admired Osama bin Laden and ISIS affiliates in Afghanistan and West Africa. He also openly expressed fantasies about killing non-believers and martyring himself in a mass-casualty attack.
Court records detail Hassan’s posts, including anti-Semitic comments and one instance where he described a football player’s forehead as a “sniper’s dream.” On one social media account, Hassan shared an AI-generated analysis of his profile, which described him as “a young radical Islamist extremist obsessed with jihad and violence.” Hassan later confirmed this assessment with a post stating, “Yep, I am an extremist.”
Commentaires