Tim Walz turned Minneapolis into the ISIS recruitment capital of America.
Now an 18-year-old who grew up there just tried to massacre a crowd of families at the Mall of America – and only the FBI stood between him and a body count.
Sheikhdoon Abdullahi Mohamud is in a federal holding cell today, and the six words he said right before FBI agents arrested him at gunpoint are going to make your blood boil.
What He Had Planned and When He Planned to Do It
In September, he told an FBI source he had chosen October 24 as the day – targeting a Hmong Arts Celebration at the Mall of America because it would have "a lot of people."
He sent a selfie-style video pledging allegiance to ISIS and its leader.
He specifically asked for a fully automatic rifle.
On Tuesday, he met someone he believed to be an ISIS-connected weapons dealer – actually an undercover FBI employee – and paid $600 cash for an AK-47-style rifle, four magazines, and roughly 200 rounds of live ammunition.
He walked out to his car with the rifle in a duffel bag.
https://twitter.com/Helen_Sexton3/status/2107910462897791057?s=20
FBI agents arrested him at gunpoint.
The plan was less than three weeks from execution.
Mohamud is a U.S. citizen – born here, son of Somali nationals who entered through a New York City airport in 2000.
His mother became a naturalized citizen in 2010.
His father in 2017.
America gave his family everything, and he spent his teenage years planning to slaughter Americans at a shopping mall in their name.
Minnesota Has Had an ISIS Problem for Two Decades
This is not the first time someone from Minnesota's Somali community has tried to commit mass murder for ISIS.
It's not even close.
Over a decade ago, the U.S. Attorney's office in Minnesota said it plainly: no city in America had produced more ISIS and al-Shabaab recruits than Minneapolis.
In 2015, al-Shabaab released a video specifically calling for an attack on the Mall of America by name.
In 2015, six Minnesota men were charged with conspiring to travel to Syria and join ISIS.
In 2016, a Somali man attacked shoppers at a St. Cloud, Minnesota mall with a knife while invoking Allah – injuring ten people before an off-duty officer shot him dead.
https://twitter.com/Helen_Sexton3/status/2107912792971837689?s=20
What stopped on Tuesday was one specific attack – because the FBI was watching.
Minnesota's political leaders have spent twenty years treating this as a sensitivity problem instead of a security problem.
Tim Walz had four years as governor to get serious about the terror recruitment network operating inside his state.
He chose DEI programs and open borders advocacy instead.
What Kash Patel's FBI Is Doing That the Old FBI Wasn't
FBI Director Kash Patel didn't just issue a statement – he released numbers.
Since Trump took office, the FBI has stopped over 1,100 individuals from conducting terror attacks, executed more than 4,000 foreign terrorist organization-related disruptions and arrests – a 38% increase – and Patel has reported that arrests connected to the ISIS movement have surged nearly 500% compared to the previous period.
The old FBI under the Biden administration was more concerned with investigating parents at school board meetings than tracking the ISIS recruitment pipeline running through Minneapolis.
Patel's FBI opened this investigation in December 2024 – before Trump was even inaugurated – and ran it for ten months until Mohamud was behind bars.
That's what competent counterterrorism looks like.
Trump praised the operation Wednesday.
"The FBI did a great job," he said – and for once, that's not a political talking point.
It's just true.
The Part Nobody in the Media Is Asking About
Mohamud reportedly wanted to join al-Shabaab first.
He told his FBI contact in May he was "so excited to make hijrah" – Islamic emigration to a Muslim land – and wanted to go to Somalia, get married, and fight what he called "the enemies of Allah."
https://twitter.com/libsoftiktok/status/2107891603008356424?s=20
He couldn't raise the $2,000 for a plane ticket.
So he decided to kill Americans instead.
That's the threat model Democrats refuse to acknowledge – radicalized young men who can't get out of the country deciding to attack here at home.
It's cheaper.
It requires no coordination.
And it's waiting inside communities where local politicians have spent decades refusing to look.
The mall he targeted – filled with families, kids, a cultural celebration – was his idea of a soft target.
The FBI disagreed.
Sources:
- Stephen Sorace, Brittany Miller, Bill Melugin, "Minnesota man accused of plotting Mall of America attack, pledging allegiance to ISIS: FBI," Fox News, October 7, 2026.
- "FBI says US disrupted 640 terror plots last year as threats intensify," The National Desk, 2026.
- "How Rep. Ilhan Omar's Minnesota District Became the Terrorist Recruitment Capital of the US," Fox News.