Another preventable tragedy has struck an American campus, and once again, federal agencies appear to have dropped the ball on monitoring known terrorist sympathizers.
Mohamed Bailor Jalloh, a 36-year-old former Virginia Army National Guard member with a documented history of supporting ISIS, opened fire at Old Dominion University on Thursday. The FBI confirmed that Jalloh had previously been convicted of attempting to provide material support to the Islamic State terrorist organization and served 11 years in federal prison.
Here's the question every American should be asking: How does someone with a terrorism conviction and ISIS connections get the opportunity to carry out an attack on U.S. soil? Where was the FBI monitoring that should have been in place?
A Pattern of Federal Failure
This incident follows a disturbing pattern we've seen repeatedly under previous administrations - known threats slipping through the cracks while federal agencies focus their resources on surveilling law-abiding American parents at school board meetings and targeting Trump supporters.
Jalloh was sentenced to 11 years in prison plus five years of supervised release for his terrorism-related conviction. The fact that he was able to obtain weapons and carry out this attack suggests either a massive failure in the supervision system or a dangerous gap in our national security apparatus.
President Trump's administration has made clear that combating radical Islamic terrorism remains a top priority, but cases like this highlight the institutional failures that have been allowed to fester in our federal law enforcement agencies.
Time for Accountability
While the mainstream media will likely downplay the terrorism angle and focus on gun control narratives, the real issue here is accountability. How many more Americans have to suffer because our federal agencies can't properly monitor known terrorist supporters?
Under Trump's leadership, we've seen a renewed focus on actual threats to American security rather than the political witch hunts that characterized the previous administration. But incidents like this prove there's still much work to be done in cleaning house at agencies that have lost sight of their primary mission.
The victims at Old Dominion University deserved better protection from their own government. It's time to demand answers about how this known terrorist threat was allowed to strike again.