Only after Awet Hagos of Yemen was arrested on assault and weapons charges in North Carolina did ICE run fingerprints and find that he was on the terror watch list.

With an immigrant terrorism scare far from the U.S.-Mexico border, North Carolina now officially joins the no longer very exclusive “every-state-is-a-border state” club.

An immigrant from Yemen in North Carolina’s rural northwest Gates County began firing a rifle outside a Carolina Quick Stop store in the small town of Eure, then attacked responding Gates County Sheriff’s deputies and barricaded himself in a four-hour standoff with them. After the eventual arrest on assault and weapons charges, Sheriff Ray Campbell reported that Awet Hagos of Yemen was on the FBI’s terrorism watch list and that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) wanted him on an arrest warrant “detainer.”

Only after all this did ICE run fingerprints and find that Hagos was on the terror watch list and had somehow made his way to Haiti and, from there, the United States. He’d been living in the area for six months, the sheriff later told local news, apparently sponsored by the Quick Stop store owner.

I have been unable to independently confirm that Hagos is watch-listed, and the name Hagos is commonly associated with nationals in Eritrea and Ethiopia, although populations of both countries do also reside in Yemen.

This entire circumstance demands a public inquiry and far more national attention.

These events an hour’s drive from multiple military installations did prompt North Carolina’s Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, a Republican running for the governor’s office this November, to pen a letter to President Joe Biden demanding answers about Hagos and to hold a press conference. But these moves drew scant coverage from local newspapers like The Carolina Journal, which has reported that more than half a million immigrants have recently settled in the Tar Heel state.

“The Gates County Sheriff’s Office currently has only 12 deputies, yet they find themselves dealing with a violent illegal immigrant their own national security [databases] have flagged as a potential terrorist threat,” Robinson said at the March 18 conference. “I call on President Biden to give immediate answers. How did Hagos enter the United States? How did Hagos get to North Carolina? Are there other places he’s been in our state he’s traveled to or through, and should those areas be on heightened alert?”

To be sure, Robinson would no doubt like to catch the border crisis wind in his candidacy sail. Polling clearly shows the crisis that has brought millions of illegal immigrants to settle in every corner of the United States often ranks as the highest voter concern of the 2024 election, a deeply negative factor for Democrats.

But Robinson stands in good nonpartisan company in felling this tree, even if its fall was not heard very far and wide.

For one thing, the Houthi rebel group in Yemen, furious over American support for Israel’s war in Gaza, is front and center in a series of attacks against shipping in the Red Sea that has prompted U.S. military strikes and a re-designation of the group as a terrorist organization.

The Houthi leadership has publicly vowed a “big” response against the United States to counter any military action against them for their Red Sea attacks.

Even if he was more aligned with Ethiopian or Eritrean populations in Yemen, could Hagos have been motivated in any way by international events? That may be too early to know, but it’s not too early or unreasonable for anyone to ask and keep asking.

Nonpartisan homeland security experts say the threat of infiltration by anyone associated with terrorism ideologies through our vulnerable border management infrastructure is severe. The Biden administration’s own 2024 Homeland Threat Assessment warns on page 12 that “terrorists may exploit the elevated flow and increasingly complex security environment to enter the United States.

“Individuals with potential terrorism connections continue to attempt to enter the Homeland illegally between ports of entry … via the southern border,” the assessment reads, tallying that 160 terror suspects were detained crossing in just fiscal year 2023 alone.

Since the border crisis began on Inauguration Day 2021, Border Patrol has logged the apprehensions of 340 watch-listed immigrant terror suspects who illegally crossed the southern border, while a record-breaking 2 million so-called “got-aways” escaped apprehension to live inside the country, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection website reports.

In his latest testimony to Congress about what he regards as a rising terrorist infiltration threat, FBI Director Christopher Wray told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that a “wide array of very dangerous threats … emanate from” the southwest border, including the designated terror group ISIS.