ALLEGED TERRORIST PLOTTING TO MASS MURDER JEWS IN ISIS-STYLE ATTACK IN BROOKLYN ON OCT. 7, MUHAMMAD SHAHZEB KHAN, CAUGHT NEARBY ATTEMPTING TO CROSS BORDER INTO U.S.

DONATE  TO THE FREE LANCE HERE

Sept. 27, 2024

A Pakistani student living in Canada was an ISIS sympathizer out to kill hundreds of Jews on the anniversary of Hamas's deadly Oct. 7 attack on Israel in Brooklyn, New York. He tried to slip across the border into the U.S. but was stopped 11 miles short by Canadian police and arrested on Sept. 4—pursuant to an F.B.I. warrant.

“If we succeed with our plan this would be the largest Attack on US soil since 9/11," Muhammad Shahzeb Khan texted who he thought were co-conspirators in the plot on Aug. 29, but were in fact undercover F.B.I. officers, the criminal complaint filed against Kahn in Federal court in Manhattan alleges.

The 20-year-old was charged with attempting to aid a designated foreign terrorist organization. If convicted, he faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. 

Khan's arrest sent chills down Chris Oliver's spine. That's because Oliver, 32, suspects Khan was headed to the upstate New York farm his family has owned for six generations. 

For the past year, hundreds of foreigners have illegally entered the U.S. from Canada by simply strolling across his land. They cross almost every day, walking down the dirt road that parallels the border before passing in front of his modest house, where he lives with his wife and three children. 

"They walk across almost every night," Oliver told The Free Lance on Thursday. "Every night it's another group. Two, three, sometimes five or six."

Hours after Kahn was arrested, Oliver says, his camera caught another group illegally entering the U.S. through his property. 

"That guy could have very well been with that group," he said. "Not everyone is a good person. The Border Patrol caught two murderers crossing here."

Oliver's farm sits on the U.S. border with Canada, about 400 miles north of New York City. Because it's between the Canadian cities of Toronto, Ontario and Montreal, Quebec, it's a prime location for smugglers. 

“It’s always been a hot spot for smuggling,” Oliver says.

The dirt road the migrants walk down once connected the U.S. to Canada. It was used by bootleggers during Prohibition, Oliver says. A barn on his property beside the road includes a liquor-bottle shaped cut-out he suspects was illuminated from behind with a lantern at night to signal a safehaven.

It was used as a smuggling route once again in the 1970s. This time, New York State Police used it to bring gasoline into the U.S. from Canada during the Arab Oil Embargo—meant to punish the U.S. for supporting Israel during the 1973 Arab-Israeli War.

Today the road is split by a wall-less border and has been grown over with new trees and bushes. It becomes paved again about 1/4 mile into Canada. Smugglers drop the illegal border crossers off at the end of the road on the Canadian side and they only have to walk through the woods 1/4 mile to get into America.

Oliver showed The Free Lance half-a-dozen herd paths on his farm the illegal crossers use. One is so well-used its almost a formal trail.

Oliver has fought back by installing cameras on his land and broadcasting video of the endless tide of illegal crossings on Facebook. In the week leading up to this past Labour Day, a camera Oliver installed in front of his house recorded 48 potential terrorists walking past his front door.

"That was a record," Oliver said. "And that's just what one camera caught in one place. More could have slipped past in places where there aren't any cameras."

Last year, a group of migrants used a Mercedes Benz SUV to illegally cross the border by driving through a cornfield that straddles it. They got stuck in a ditch and abandoned the SUV. It sits in Oliver's driveway today.

"I'm trying to figure out how to claim it," he says.

He also has to pick up their trash. 

"They leave it everywhere," he said. 

Plastic bags for Indian products covered in Hindi mostly. The day I visited, he found three 500 rupee notes worth about $18 and a pair of stylish, new sneakers.

"First thing you do when you get to a new country is toss your trash around?," Oliver asks sarcastically. "What's that?"

All the strangers passing by his isolated home makes Oliver, his family and neighbors in this remote part of rural New York very nervous. Parents of children who are friends with his children won't let them visit Oliver's house unless he's there.

"They're afraid," Olver explained. "I can't blame them."

Oliver does blame Pres. Joe Biden.

"When Trump was president, nothing," Oliver says. "Two years ago it started, but this last year it blew up."

Figures reported by the Federal government confirm Oliver's claim thousands of people are illegally entering the U.S. across his farm. 

In fact, the area has the highest rate by far of illegal crossings anywhere along the US-Canada border—and it is continuing to grow.

To better protect the border, the Department of Homeland Security divides America's frontiers into sections it calls "sectors." The section of the American border with Canada in New York's most northern counties—which includes Oliver's farm—is part of the "Swanton Sector." 

At least 17,810 people trespassed into the U.S. from Canada through the Swanton Sector so far in 2024 alone, according to the Customs and Border Patrol's website. 

In 2021, there were only 365 illegal crossings in the Swanton Sector.

That's a 4,782% increase in three years.

The section with the second highest number of illegal crossings on the U.S./Canada border so far this year is the Detroit Sector: a paltry 583.

(The Swanton Sector also includes Vermont and northern New Hampshire. A breakdown for northern New York alone is not available, a Customs and Border Patrol spokesperson said. He did not respond to additional questions.)

25 miles east of Oliver's Fort Covington farm Danny Cowen lives on the Canadian border in Chateaugay, New York.

“Fifty out of my 53 years, I've lived on this property,” Cowan told the Albany Times Union last week. “And I've never seen anything like it's been the last two years.”

Since the spike in illegal crossings over his remote homestead, Cowan keeps not one but two guns on him—a handgun and a shotgun—when he patrols his property.

While America's northern border is thought to be generally safer to cross than its southern border, that's not the case in winter.

In 2023, eight people from two families including a two-year-old child plus their Akwesasne Mohawk smuggler were killed attempting to cross the St. Lawrence river in a boat during a squall. Last winter in Moors, New York, Border Patrol officers found two Senegalese men frozen to death in Mar. Four months before that in Dec., pregnant Mexican Ana Karen Vasquez-Flores was found floating dead in the nearby Great Chazy River—also killed by the cold.

“We sat down with Border Patrol,” Todd Gumlaw, Moors's fire chief said. “And one of the gentlemen told us that the numbers that we're seeing up here are greater than some of the southern border towns.”

Oliver has spoken out on the CBC in Canada and on Fox News in the U.S. He says he's voting for Donald Trump in Nov. because of the former president's strict stance against migration. 

"He'll stop it," Oliver said. "Hopefully."

He also says Canada needs to do more. Most of the people using his farm to illegally cross the border originally entered Canada on tourist visas, he says the Border Patrol told him. The U.S. should simply send anyone caught illegally crossing from Canada back to Canada.

"I bet that would stop them from letting them in in the first place." 

Meanwhile the Canadian parliament held a hearing last week into how Khan—the 20-year-old would-be terrorist from Pakistan—got into Canada in the first place.

“Given what we’ve recently learned about one alleged ISIS terrorist being let into Canada,” Melissa Lantsman, Deputy Leader of Canada's Conservative Party, said after Khan's Sept. 4 arrest, “the Trudeau Government must be open and transparent with Canadians to answer how and when Muhammad Shahzeb Khan was able to gain entry to Canada and whether there were any early warning signs.”

During the Sept. 19 hearing held in response, Conservative MP Raquel Dancho told Canadian Immigration Minister Marc Miller “Your government has brought in a student visa holder from Pakistan who is alleged to be a terrorist.” 

Miller replied: "we are confident in our security screening."

The Immigration Minister admitted, however, it was American law enforcement officials who allegedly uncovered Khan's villanious plot.

DONATE  TO THE FREE LANCE HERE