|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... |
WASHINGTON— On the surface, life in the United States seems to continue with its usual rhythms—subway trains rumble beneath New York, children spill into schoolyards in Chicago, and tourists snap selfies in front of the Capitol. But beneath the normalcy, a familiar undercurrent of fear is returning.
The threat of terrorist sleeper cells, once thought to be a relic of post-9/11 paranoia, is back in headlines. National security officials warn of Iranian-backed Hezbollah agents living quiet lives in American cities. At the same time, neo-Nazi militias and white supremacist groups are growing bolder, their ideology moving from fringe forums into the real world with chilling consequences. Add to that the violent infiltration of Mexican cartels, and the question becomes harder to avoid:
Are we safe?
The New Shape of Terror
Sleeper cells—covert agents who embed themselves in a society, awaiting orders to strike—represent a particular kind of anxiety: the fear that someone smiling in the grocery line could secretly be plotting an atrocity.
In 2017, New York-based Ali Kourani was convicted of providing material support to Hezbollah’s Unit 910, tasked with identifying potential U.S. targets, including airports and federal buildings. “He was a sleeper in every sense of the word,” said an FBI agent close to the investigation.
But Kourani’s case also points to a deeper pattern: Hezbollah operatives appear to collect intelligence rather than actively prepare bombings. The U.S. government believes these agents are part of Iran’s “insurance policy”—to be activated only if military conflict erupts with the West.
That calculation is geopolitical, not apocalyptic, which makes the threat both more distant and more chilling. A conflict overseas could suddenly ignite attacks on American soil, triggered by people already here.
Domestic Extremists: No Longer Sleeping
While foreign-backed sleeper cells draw headlines, U.S. intelligence increasingly sees homegrown extremists as the more immediate danger.
Take Brandon Russell, a former National Guard member and leader of the neo-Nazi group Atomwaffen Division. In 2025, he was convicted for plotting to sabotage the Baltimore power grid. His goal wasn’t just blackouts—it was societal collapse, a belief rooted in white supremacist ideology and a vision of race war.
In online spaces like Terrorgram—a neo-Nazi propaganda network designated as a foreign terrorist organization—operatives trade bomb-making manuals, call for lone-wolf attacks, and publish kill lists of journalists, judges, and politicians.
Unlike Hezbollah operatives, these extremists aren’t waiting for foreign commands. They are the command.
The Department of Homeland Security’s latest Homeland Threat Assessment lists domestic violent extremism—particularly white supremacist violence—as the most persistent and lethal terror threat in the U.S. today.
And they’re not coming through airports or border checkpoints. They’re already here.
Cartels and the Myth of “Foreign” Violence
Meanwhile, cartels like Sinaloa and CJNG operate extensive drug and trafficking networks throughout the U.S., often through alliances with local gangs. They rarely engage in public terror attacks, but their operations kill thousands yearly through the fentanyl crisis, assassinations, and urban gun violence.
In 2023 alone, fentanyl overdoses killed over 75,000 Americans, with many pills traced back to cartel labs in Mexico. The cartels’ strategy isn’t ideological—it’s economic warfare, and it’s working.
Despite the scale of the violence, cartel activity is often excluded from terrorism narratives. Why? Because the victims are often Black, Brown, poor, and forgotten.
It raises a disturbing question: Whose safety do we prioritize?
The Unequal Distribution of Safety
Statistically, the U.S. is not in a state of constant imminent danger. Most Americans will never encounter a terrorist, cartel enforcer, or domestic extremist. But safety is not equally distributed.
- Jewish communities face regular threats, as seen in the Tree of Life synagogue shooting (2018) and the Jersey City attack (2019).
- Black Americans continue to be targeted by white supremacists—from Charleston to Buffalo.
- LGBTQ+ clubs, drag events, and trans individuals have faced a wave of bomb threats and online incitement.
- Immigrants and refugees are often scapegoated in terrorism rhetoric, even as evidence shows they are far less likely to commit crimes than native-born citizens.
This isn’t just a matter of crime statistics—it’s about psychological safety. The fear of violence, the constant bracing for hate, is its own form of terror.
Are We Safe? The Answer Is Personal
To ask “Are we safe?” is to ask a deeply subjective question. Safety is a lived experience. It depends on where you live, how you look, whom you love, and what you believe.
In a gated suburb of Arizona, you may feel immune. In a synagogue in Pittsburgh, or a Black church in Charleston, or a trans teen’s high school in Texas—you may not.
“We are safer from 9/11-style attacks,” said Elizabeth Neumann, a former DHS official. “But we are far less safe from the threats that come from within.”
Even the systems designed to protect us can become sources of violence. Survivors of state-sanctioned abuse, police brutality, and ICE raids may tell you: the danger doesn’t always wear a foreign flag.
The Real Sleeper Cell Is Complacency
Perhaps the most dangerous sleeper cell in America isn’t Hezbollah or The Base. It’s the one nestled in the national psyche—the belief that terrorism is always foreign, always brown, always Muslim.
That assumption has allowed white Christian nationalists to build militias, stockpile weapons, and launch attacks with relative impunity. It has deflected resources away from monitoring domestic extremism. It has justified surveillance of mosques, while letting anti-government militias train on ranches in Idaho and Texas.
And it has fed into a political culture where safety becomes a partisan weapon. Politicians decry border “invasions” while ignoring domestic terror plots. News outlets chase sensational stories of jihad, while extremists walk freely in tactical gear, planning the next Charlottesville.
Conclusion: A Fragile Security
So, are we safe?
We are safe enough to work, to live, to send our children to school. But we are not immune to violence, and we are not equally protected. The real threat isn’t just from sleeper cells or gangs—it’s from our failure to see the full picture, to confront extremism in all its forms, foreign and domestic.
America’s safety depends on our willingness to look beyond fear-driven narratives and toward a comprehensive, honest reckoning with the violence we tolerate, the ideologies we nurture, and the systems we ignore.
Safety isn’t a state. It’s a choice.
