In a chilling near-miss for American security, authorities have arrested 28-year-old Afghan migrant Karimullah Hakimi in a Detroit suburb after discovering he had assembled a pipe bomb loaded with nails and explosives in his apartment, intended for a crowded New Year's Eve event in a major Midwestern city—mere hours before a separate mass shooting claimed five lives in a Washington, DC nightclub on December 30, 2024.
Hakimi, who entered the US via a humanitarian parole program in 2022 following the Taliban takeover, allegedly drew inspiration from ISIS propaganda videos accessed on his seized laptop, with FBI agents uncovering bomb-making tutorials and radicalization chats in Pashto linking him to overseas extremists; the device, hidden in a backpack, was neutralized before detonation, averting what officials called a "devastating" attack on innocent civilians.
The timing has sparked urgent debates on immigration vetting and border security, as President-elect Donald Trump cited the incident in a fiery Truth Social post, vowing "immediate deportations for terror-linked migrants" upon his January 20 inauguration, while Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas emphasized the arrest as proof of the system's effectiveness in thwarting threats. As the DC shooting investigation unfolds with no apparent ties to Hakimi's plot, counter terrorism experts warn of rising lone-wolf radicalization among recent arrivals, urging enhanced surveillance amid fears of copycat violence in the holiday season's wake.