National
The secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, has warned that one of the top threats facing the US in the lead-up to November’s presidential election are “lone offenders” aiming to disrupt voting and other public targets.
“In the aftermath of 9/11 the most prominent terrorism-related threat facing our nation was that of sophisticated foreign terrorist networks,” Mayorkas said in a keynote speech at a closed-door conference, hosted by the Soufan Center in New York.
He added: “But today another prominent and challenging terrorism-related threat facing the United States is the lone offenders.”
In a Manhattan location near where the iconic twin towers once stood, Mayorkas said these types of domestic threat actors “do not necessarily need a hijacked 757” to commit terrorism, but instead go after “schools and campuses, houses of worship, grocery stores, hospitals, polling places, election workers and law enforcement officers”.
“These are individuals who have been radicalized to violence based on ideologies of hate, anti-government sentiment, conspiracy theories or personal grievances,” he said, describing what are largely the ideologies of rightwing extremists. “In our modern, heightened terrorism threat environment, any locality, anywhere, can be a target at any time.”