After the West Sixth Street attack in Austin left three dead and more than a dozen injured, the FBI is investigating possible terrorism. This is a stark reminder that legal status on paper is not the same as real assimilation and real security.
This article is a lightly edited transcript of the “Here’s the Point” podcast by Ryan Helfenbein, executive director of the Standing for Freedom Center.
Early Sunday morning this week, shots rang out in Austin’s entertainment district near 6thStreet. Two people* were killed — including Ryder Harrington, a Texas Tech student — along with 14 others who were wounded outside a popular bar.
The shooter was identified as 53-year-old Ndiaga Diagne, a Senegalese-born man who had been a naturalized U.S. citizen since 2013. He was described as wearing clothing bearing the Iranian flag and the words “Property of Allah.” There was also a Quran on the seat of his vehicle.
He drove around the block, opened fire with a pistol, exited the vehicle, and then opened fire again with a rifle before Austin police arrived in less than a minute, killing the shooter.
The FBI is investigating this as a potential and likely act of terrorism. And if you think of the timing — in the same 24-hour period that the U.S. and Israeli military forces began Operation Epic Fury striking Iranian targets — there are no coincidences.
This act coincided with others, leaving little doubt as to the motivation. But while there may be little doubt about what motivated the shooter based on the description, we need to look and think more critically about what it reveals about our broken immigration system, Islam as a whole, and the state of the West.
First, the timing with Iran is no coincidence.
Make no mistake: Ndiaga Diagne, who did have a criminal background but nothing like this in his prior history, did not randomly choose this week to open fire on a crowd of young Americans. He showed up wearing an Iranian flag. He had been posting pro-Iranian regime content online as far back as 2018, calling Iran the only “brave” Muslim nation standing against Western influence. He expressed hostility toward American and Israeli leadership.
And the attack came in the immediate aftermath of U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran — strikes that predictably inflamed radical Islamist sentiment worldwide. The warning of sleeper cells in the United States since the mass illegal immigration crisis under Joe Biden has been an ongoing threat. And there are likely more inspired attacks that will come on U.S. soil.
It is important that we do recognize the patterns of Islamic terror and that we call it out by its very name. There is absolutely no benefit to pretending that this is not terrorism.
Second, and it’s important to be honest about this, our immigration system might make paper citizens but that does mean that they are compatible citizens.
Diagne entered the United States on a tourist visa in 2000. He obtained a green card through marriage in 2006. He was naturalized in 2013. He passed background checks at every step. He had, at least on paper, become an American citizen.
But this is exactly what many have been contending has been a problem in our immigration system for decades. Paper alone doesn’t necessarily mean that someone is fully naturalized and assimilated to the American way of life. Paper does not undo decades of Islamic ideological and worldview commitment.
The naturalization process can confirm that a man has no disqualifying criminal record and can recite the basics of the American constitutional government. It cannot confirm whether he has genuinely embraced the American system of government and American freedom followed by the American way of life.
That is very important to recognize, and we must be honest in this.
America is more than merely a creedal nation. And while we must as Christians always recognize first the imago Dei that every single man, woman, and child, born and unborn, is made in the image of God, we also recognize that Islam is no discriminator of persons. It is an ideology that destroys regardless of one’s ethnicity or country of origin.
Islam is an ideology and worldview commitment. Islam is not a race, an ethnicity, or a people group. Islam is not compatible with the American Constitution or the American way of life. But immigrating Islamicists into the United States introduces a very dangerous ideology into our American system.
Gov. Greg Abbott, R-Texas, was right to ask hard questions about whether the vetting process was thorough enough regarding Diagne. But this problem goes beyond any one presidential administration or immigration policy. The real question is structural: Are we serious about evaluating whether those we are naturalizing actually share a commitment to assimilate into the United States, or are we simply checking boxes and stamping paper?
Third, the West has a serious problem with Islam, and it’s not Islamophobia.
Diagne did not come to the United States through the visa lottery; he came through a tourist visa and later a marriage-based green card. But his case puts a spotlight on a broader system that demands scrutiny. Since the passage of the Immigration Act of 1990, the Diversity Visa Lottery has issued tens of thousands of green cards annually to applicants from countries that have historically had low immigration rates to the United States — a program that, by design, gives preferences to nations outside our traditional immigration patterns. That can be a cause for concern.
Superficial diversity quotas can cause an immigration system to overlook serious red flags in the vetting process. That’s why diversity standards can be very dangerous.
Over the past 25 years, approximately 2.5 million or more immigrants from Muslim-majority countries have entered the United States through various legal channels. Yes, papered citizens, who in many cases may not have been compatible with American life, even while seeking a better life than the Muslim countries they were leaving.
Now, I want to be clear that as Americans we should be for legal immigration, but not all forms of legal immigration are correct. The Biden administration brought millions to the United States and gave temporary status to Haitians, Columbians, and Venezuelans who had no business coming to the United States. I say that with all dignity and respect as all people are created equal. But it has to do with the failed state of the country of origin; it has to do with cultural values, customs and practices that are not compatible with the American system; it has to do with a failed state. Haiti is a perfect example of a failed state.
We need serious vetting in our immigration process. We need a serious examination of compatibility when it comes to customs, practices, and values as a people.
The Texas shooter is yet again another example of the rising threat of Islam in the United States under the guise of legal immigration and diversity quotas This as Texas will be battling this year over the question of Sharia and its compatibility with the Texas state constitution.
The shooting in Austin, the Texas capital, makes such questions a matter of even greater urgency. No, there is no way to eliminate all mass shootings, and no, Islam is not the only challenge in the United States. But it is one problem we absolutely have a choice about at a time when we can absolutely define what kind of immigration policy we should have, even as many western European nations have a huge challenge with mass immigration and Islam.
Europe is proof that this reality is coming one day soon to the United States unless it is confronted and stopped — and there is still time to stop it in the United States.
* Editor’s Note: Since this podcast was recorded, a third shooting victim has died. The three killed by Ndiaga Diagne are Savitha Shan, 21, a student at University of Texas-Austin; Jorge Pederson, 30, who had recently relocated to Austin; and as noted above, Ryder Harrington, 19, a student at Texas Tech University.
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