Dearborn — While the press and politicians bicker about whether to re-import an MS-13 gang member so he might be re-deported properly, nobody is talking about the more serious threat in Dearborn.
Issam Bazzi, a man designated as a “Known or Suspected Terrorist” (KST), is living near a KFC and allowed to walk around and do as he pleases.
According to highly sensitive documents provided to me by a frustrated member of the intelligence community, the Biden administration knowingly released Bazzi into the interior in December 2021, after he was caught with his wife and daughter wading across the Rio Grande. This, despite the fact that Bazzi was a positive hit on the FBI’s terror watch list.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained Bazzi as a serious threat and sent the file to the FBI. The FBI advised ICE that Bazzi be held because he was a flight risk. Nevertheless, somebody in Washington overrode the FBI instructions and ordered Bazzi released, because he was overweight and susceptible to Covid, according to those documents.
Bazzi’s case was the first public acknowledgement that a person on the Terror Watch List had ever knowingly been granted entry into the country. As a rule, migrants on the list attempting to enter the U.S. are detained, interrogated, and then deported.
Not Bazzi. In fact, Bazzi had applied for a visa under the Trump’s first Administration in 2019 but was denied after screening revealed that he is a “Category 5 Group Member” of an unspecified terrorist organization with “substantive high side derogatory information.”
Under the Biden border free-for-all, however, Bazzi and 98 others on the list were granted entry and given bus and airplane tickets to their destinations of preference. Since then, four KSTs have successfully registered for Medicaid.
Not much is known about Bazzi. He is 54 and was born in Lebanon and fled to Venezuela in the early 1990s in the wake of the violence. Bazzi is plump, has poor manners, and never thanked me for the housewarming gift I brought him back 2022—a floral arrangement from a dead man’s wake.
In light of the hand-wringing over Kilmar Obrega Garcia—the human trafficking, tattooed gangbanger from El Salvador—I thought to check on Bazzi’s status. An old woman at the Dearborn house said Bazzi still lives there but was away at work.
What I did find from Congressional sources is as shocking as it is confounding. Last month, Joseph Humire, an international terrorism expert, testified before the House Oversight Committee and specifically detailed Bazzi’s case.
While Bazzi’s Dearborn relatives described him to me as a mild-mannered former clothing store owner, Humire says there is something more sinister at play:
“Review of corporate records and interviews in Venezuela reveal that Bazzi is far from a modest immigrant seeking asylum in the U.S. and has close ties to high-ranking members of the Venezuelan government,” Humire testified.
“In Venezuela, Bazzi is known for his business activities on Margarita Island… On the island, he owned luxury apartments, yachts, and helped finance a commercial building with ties to the Venezuelan government. Bazzi maintained close connections to senior figures in the Maduro regime, 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.”
What in the world? We’ve got a potential Tony Montana over here.
Why is this guy—allegedly affiliated with an international drug smuggling and terror cartel—allowed to live among us? Maybe Bazzi is a Deep State asset, but then why does the rest of the Deep State not seem to know? If they need help finding him, just let me know.
I can take you to his front door. It’s just down the street from the KFC.
Charlie LeDuff is a reporter educated in public schools. Follow him on X @Charlieleduff.
