They finally got him.
After three years of doing whatever he pleased, Issam Bazzi, the first person ever allowed entry into the U.S. despite being designated as a “Known or Suspected Terrorist,” was apprehended in Dearborn during a routine traffic stop.
The 54-year-old Venezuelan was pulled over last week on Michigan Avenue by undercover ICE agents who had been surveilling him for weeks. Bazzi was served with an arrest warrant and taken into custody.
Apparently, he was on his way to work at an Ypsilanti diner.
Workers at the diner confirmed that Bazzi was indeed an employee but was off for the day. When informed that Bazzi would never be coming back to work—ever—the owner of the restaurant questioned this reporter’s sexuality, said unsociable things about his mother, and invited him to vacate the premises with a wave of a middle finger.
Bazzi’s father also confirmed his arrest by immigration officials but insisted the authorities have the wrong idea about his son. “Issam good, good, good, good,” he said pointing skyward. “God.”
That may be so, but when immigration officials in Texas arrested Bazzi on the banks of the Rio Grande in December 2021, he was flagged on the FBI’s terror watchlist as person who was a “Category 5 Group Member” of an unspecified terrorist organization with “substantive high side derogatory information.”
While Bazzi’s Dearborn relatives described him as a mild-mannered clothing-store owner, Joseph Humire, the current deputy assistant secretary of defense, described him to Congress as something more ominous.
“In Venezuela, Bazzi owned luxury apartments, yachts, and helped finance a commercial building with ties to the Venezuelan government,” Humire testified.
“Notably with… the family of Tareck El Aissami, a former Venezuelan vice president and minister accused of corruption, money laundering, with alleged ties to Hezbollah and is on the ICE Most Wanted List. Only weeks prior to making his trip to the U.S. Southwest border, Bazzi reportedly attended the funeral of relatives of Tareck El Aissami.
“Bazzi’s profile fits more as a logistical financier rather than a potential asylum seeker.”
Immigration agents recognized Bazzi as a flight risk and recommended his continued detention. Normally, a person on the terror watchlist would be detained, interrogated, and then summarily deported.
Inexplicably, officials in Biden’s Department of Homeland Security in Washington, D.C., ordered that Bazzi be released because he was overweight and thus susceptible to Covid, according to highly sensitive documents obtained by Michigan Enjoyer.
Despite concerns about Bazzi’s comorbidities, U.S. officials did not require Bazzi to accept a Covid vaccination shot as a precondition to entry. Instead, he was given a one-way ticket to Dearborn. Once in Michigan and living at his brother’s house, Bazzi was awarded permission to work, given a social security number, and issued a driver’s license.
At some point during his American odyssey, Bazzi’s claim for asylum was denied and he was ordered deported by an immigration judge.
Bazzi currently is appealing his deportation order and now faces one of two choices: Wait for years in jail at the “Lake County Leavenworth” in Baldwin for his day in court, or take Trump’s offer of $1,000 and deport himself.
Either way, adios.
Charlie LeDuff is a reporter educated in public schools. Follow him on X @Charlieleduff.
