The FBI has received word that a 19-year-old Somali-American woman from St. Paul, Minnesota, has left the United States for Syria with plans to join the Islamic State terrorist group.
“What is causing somebody who left a civil war that came here to have a second chance in life — what is pushing that person to go to unfamiliar territory and go to Syria and fight a war that religious leaders are saying is very wrong?” said Sadik Warfa, a deputy director for the Global Somali Diaspora, a local ABC affiliate reported Thursday.
“First of all, we are Americans. We are Somali-Americans. The concern for the safety of this country concerns us all,” he added.
Kyle Loven of an FBI field office in Minnesota told the station that the bureau is working with local Somali immigrants on Islamic State group’s efforts to recruit Americans.
“We are very actively engaged within the Somali community,” Mr. Loven said, the station reported. “We’re engaged with religious leaders. We’re engaged with community leaders, and we’re engaged with concerned members of the public who are abhorred by what they see with respect to their young people and want to put a stop to it.”
News of the 19-year-old’s quest to join the terrorist group comes just days after it was announced that Douglas McAuthur McCain, who also grew up in Minnesota, was killed in the Middle East fighting on behalf of the Islamic State group.
SEE ALSO: Minnesota’s Twin City jihadists: ISIL member wants to ‘bring back the caliphate’
FBI Director James Comey said in June that he believed at least 100 Americans had already left the U.S. in an effort to join the terrorist group, the Associated Press reported.
• Douglas Ernst can be reached at dernst@washingtontimes.com.
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