Politics

Man arrested over alleged plot to kill Jewish people in NYC around Oct. 7

Published

1 year ago

November 12, 2024

Man arrested over alleged plot to kill Jewish people in NYC around Oct. 7

A Pakistani man who resides in Canada was arrested this week for planning to carry out a mass shooting at a Jewish center in New York City around Oct. 7, the first anniversary of Hamas’ terrorist attack on Israel, the Justice Department said on Friday.

Muhammad Shahzeb Khan, 20, had allegedly planned to attack a Jewish center in Brooklyn in support of the Islamic State groupor ISIS. He also considered carrying out a shooting on Oct. 11, which is Yom Kippur, the holiest day in Judaism, federal officials said.

Khan, also known as Shahzeb Jadoon, was arrested on Wednesday in or around Ormstown, Canada, which is about 12 miles from the U.S. border, the Justice Department said. The U.S. government said it will seek to extradite him from Canada.

Khan has been charged with one count of attempting to provide material support and resources to a designated foreign terrorist organization, which carries up to 20 years in prison. It’s unclear if he has obtained legal representation. The Federal Defenders of New York did not immediately respond to NBC News’ request for comment on Friday.

According to the criminal complaintKhan began expressing his support for ISIS and his desire to carry out terrorist attacks in support of the group as early as November 2023 by way of social media and in communications with an FBI informant.

From late July 2024 on, Khan started communicating with two undercover law enforcement officers, telling them through encrypted messages that he was planning an attack on Jewish Chabads in a U.S. city with AR-style rifles and claiming that he had found a smuggler to take him across the border from Canada into the U.S., the complaint states. He then allegedly changed his location target to New York City, citing its large Jewish population.

“The defendant is alleged to have planned a terrorist attack in New York City around October 7th of this year with the stated goal of slaughtering, in the name of ISIS, as many Jewish people as possible,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement. “Jewish communities — like all communities in this country — should not have to fear that they will be targeted by a hate-fueled terrorist attack,” he added.

There has been a sharp increase in reports of antisemitism and anti-Muslim hate in the U.S. since Oct. 7, when Hamas launched its attacks on Israel, killing over 1,200 people. Israel responded with a mass assault on Gaza that has killed more than 40,000 people to date, Palestinian health officials say. The war has also sparked multiple violent — even deadly — incidents against Jewish and Muslim people in the U.S.

Clarissa-Jan Lim

Clarissa-Jan Lim is a breaking/trending news blogger for BLN Digital. She was previously a senior reporter and editor at BuzzFeed News.

Politics

DHS confirms that Lewandowski left the department along with Noem

Published

24 minutes ago

March 27, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Corey Lewandowski, the Trump 2016 campaign manager who served as an unpaid adviser to former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem for the past year, is no longer working at DHS, the department said Friday.

A statement confirmed his departure from DHS but did not specify any future government role for Lewandowski, who was photographed with Noem this week in Guyana during an official visit she made to the South American country.

“Mr. Lewandowski no longer has a role at DHS,” the statement said.

The confirmation of his status at DHS comes amid speculation about his future after Noem was named a special envoy for Western Hemisphere security issues. Lewandowski appeared with her in photos released by the U.S. Embassy in Guyana.

Controversy swirled around Lewandowski’s role at DHS during Noem’s stormy tenure leading the department at the forefront of the administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement operations.

Lewandowski started working as political adviser to Noem while she was South Dakota governor and lobbied President Donald Trump to name her DHS chief. He played an outsize role at the department once she joined the Cabinet.

Lewandowski came into the Trump administration as a “special government employee,” raising questions about how he was counting his days at the agency. U.S. law limits temporary government employees to 130 days per year of unpaid work, but Lewandowski has worked at DHS since the start of Noem’s tenure in February 2025.

He did not respond to an earlier request for comment about whether he’d be staying in government. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Lewandowski’s employment status Friday.

Despite his informal status, Lewandowski had the ability to veto any contract exceeding $100,000 at the agency, as well as other high-level decisions. An administration official, granted anonymity to speak candidly, also told POLITICO that Lewandowski was already facing heat over DHS’s short-lived move last month to shut down TSA PreCheck. The move was seen as a way to pressure Democrats to fund the department, which has been shut down since February of this year over a funding impasse.

Noem earlier this month refused to answer questions from House Democrats about her relationship with Lewandowski amid media reports that the two have had an affair.

Lewandowski, who served as Trump’s campaign manager in 2016, was widely credited with the tactical decisions that led to the president’s win in the New Hampshire primary that year. His star faded after he was accused of grabbing a female reporter by the arm at a campaign event. He was removed from his post during an internal power struggle with then-campaign chair Paul Manafort. The Trump ally denied any wrongdoing for the incident.

Despite Lewandowski’s rocky efforts in 2016, Trump and Lewandowski have remained close. Trump briefly named Lewandowski as a senior adviser to the 2024 presidential campaign, though he was moved into a surrogate role by October in the face of displeasure from Trump.