An Afghan national living in Texas has been charged with making threats online after authorities said he posted a video on TikTok and other social media sites threatening to build a bomb, carry out a suicide attack, and kill Americans.
According to The Associated Press, federal prosecutors filed the charge against Mohammad Dawood Alokozay on Saturday in federal court.
He has not yet entered a plea, and court records do not indicate whether he has obtained an attorney.
The Texas Department of Public Safety alerted the FBI on November 25 after a video shared across multiple social media accounts showed a man claiming to live in the Dallas-Fort Worth area threatening to construct a bomb in his vehicle and kill others on the call.
The man also said the Taliban were “dear” to him, FBI Special Agent Justin Killian stated in a court filing describing the video.
The FBI identified Alokozay using facial recognition technology and arrested him the same day. Killian said Alokozay admitted to making the statements and deleted his TikTok account after people contacted him about the video.
“This Afghan national came into America during the Biden administration and as alleged, explicitly stated that he came here in order to kill American citizens,” Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in a press release.
“The public safety threat created by the Biden administration’s vetting breakdown cannot be overstated – the Department of Justice will continue working with our federal and state partners to protect the American people from the prior administration’s dangerous incompetence.”
About 76,000 Afghans who assisted Americans were brought to the U.S. under Operation Allies Welcome after the Taliban regained control of Afghanistan in 2021.
Alokozay was initially arrested on a state charge of making a terroristic threat.
Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin announced the arrest on Saturday on the social media platform X, one day after the Trump administration paused asylum decisions and visa issuance for Afghans.
Those moves followed the shooting of two National Guard members near the White House by Rahmanullah Lakanwal, a 29-year-old Afghan national who had worked with the CIA and was granted asylum during the Biden administration. Authorities have not indicated any connection between the two cases.
