Laith Adil Shehzad was only 17 years old when a grand jury indicted him under Texas’s terrorism statute. Authorities found a handgun, ISIS propaganda and recruitment material, information related to explosives, and communications with an ISIS terrorist imprisoned overseas. Prosecutors said he was preparing for a mass-casualty attack.
Shockingly, he had been on law enforcement’s radar since he was just 13. In 2021, he reportedly acknowledged that he had self-radicalized into ISIS ideology. He later entered the juvenile justice system over allegations involving homemade explosive devices. By 17, prosecutors alleged that he had a handgun, was communicating with ISIS-linked individuals, and was preparing for mass violence. Roughly four years separated that first warning from the terrorism indictment.
There’s a pattern developing in terrorism cases in our homeland, with individuals growing radicalized at younger ages than ever before. In 2025, eight of the 11 alleged actors involved in seven ISIS-inspired attacks or disrupted plots in the United States were teenagers. Four were 17 or younger, and six of the seven incidents involved at least one teenager. The year before, six of eight ISIS-inspired plots involved at least one teenager. The problem is getting younger, and the individual cases show how early the path can begin.
There is still an opportunity to recognize what is happening to these kids early and intervene, before the only institution left to deal with them is the FBI.
A school may see a disciplinary problem. Parents may see anger or isolation. Police may see juvenile crime. Online, that same kid may be consuming terrorist propaganda or developing relationships the adults around him know nothing about.
The National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) has warned that violent extremists use social media, encrypted messaging, and online gaming platforms to recruit, spread terrorist messaging, and plot attacks. A teenager sitting alone in his bedroom may be physically alone, but he may not be radicalizing alone.
The path toward terrorism can begin looking like juvenile trouble, isolation, a fascination with weapons, troubling online behavior, or a kid searching for somewhere to belong. None of those things makes a teenager a terrorist. But when extremist ideology, terrorist propaganda, violent rhetoric, weapons, and extremist relationships begin appearing alongside them, what looked like separate problems may be something more.
There Is No Single Path
Recent U.S. cases show teenagers being influenced through family members, friends, online networks, and extremist contacts they may never meet in person.
Abdullah Haji Zada was 17 when federal authorities arrested him in Oklahoma in October 2024 alongside his older brother-in-law, Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi, an Afghan national who entered the United States following the withdrawal from Afghanistan. According to federal prosecutors, the two planned an ISIS-inspired attack for Election Day, sought AK-style rifles and ammunition, and expected to die carrying it out. Haji Zada was sentenced to 15 years in federal prison.
The family relationship is important. In July 2026, the Justice Department initiated removal proceedings against Haji Zada’s mother, Nazira Haji Zada, alleging that she supported ISIS and assisted family members involved in the Election Day plot. The government also alleged that she and Tawhedi helped radicalize other family members. Those claims remain allegations, but they show that the person influencing a teenager may already be someone in his life.
In Michigan, the relationships were with distant peers. In the fall of 2025, federal authorities disrupted what prosecutors described as an ISIS-inspired attack plot involving young men in the Dearborn area. Three of the five alleged participants were teenagers. Investigators said members of the group discussed ISIS and a potential attack, communicated through encrypted applications, acquired firearms, and practiced shooting.
The investigation eventually landed on young men in New Jersey and Washington state who were also communicating about ISIS and plans to travel overseas to join the organization. After the Michigan arrests became public, prosecutors said some accelerated their travel plans. Three men from New Jersey and Washington later pleaded guilty to terrorism-related offenses.
A teenager can now build a community hundreds of miles from home, sharing material and reinforcing beliefs with people the adults around him may never know exist. Teenagers have always been influenced by their peers. What has changed is how easily they can find peers who reinforce the most extreme version of what they believe.
Christian Sturdivant’s case raises a different problem. He was 14 when the FBI first encountered him in North Carolina in 2022. According to federal authorities, he had been communicating online with someone he believed was associated with ISIS and received instructions to take a hammer, knock on doors in his neighborhood, and attack whoever answered. His grandfather intervened after Sturdivant left home carrying a hammer and knife. He subsequently received mental-health treatment, his social-media access was restricted, and the FBI investigation was eventually closed.
It didn’t pull him away from extremism. Authorities encountered him again in late 2025. Now 18, Sturdivant told undercover FBI employees posing as ISIS members that he wanted to conduct a New Year’s Eve attack using knives and hammers.
In Colorado, the investigation into Humzah Mashkoor began when he was 16. At 18, authorities arrested him at Denver International Airport as he attempted to travel overseas to join ISIS. Months earlier, another 18-year-old from the Denver area, Davin Daniel Meyer, had been arrested at the same airport while attempting to travel to Iraq to fight for ISIS.
There is no public evidence that Meyer and Mashkoor knew one another, and two cases do not establish an organized youth network in Colorado. But juvenile records and lower-level activity are often not publicly visible, making it difficult to know what may exist below the threshold of a federal terrorism case.
There is no single profile here. The path can run through family, friends, online contacts, or relationships authorities encounter years before an attack. What these cases have in common is that the process can begin while the people involved are still children, which makes the networks around them worth understanding.
The Afghan Generation Growing Up in America
More than 190,000 Afghans have settled in the United States through the relocation and resettlement efforts that followed the 2021 withdrawal, including children who have now spent several formative years growing up here. A child who arrived at 11 is now 16. A 13-year-old is now 18.
For most of those kids, those five years have meant exactly what Americans hoped they would: school, friends, jobs, sports, college, and the opportunity to build a life far removed from the Taliban’s Afghanistan. But resettlement does not eliminate the challenges that can accompany displacement and cultural adjustment.
Afghanistan remains home to dozens of terrorist groups, including Al-Qaeda, the Islamic State-Khorasan Province (ISKP), and the Haqqani Network, among many others. Geography no longer provides much separation from those influences when propaganda, recruiters, and extremist networks can reach young people online. None of that makes Afghan teenagers uniquely prone to radicalization, and the overwhelming majority will never become involved in extremism. But it does mean the country their families left behind is not disconnected from the influences some of these kids may encounter while growing up here.
Successful resettlement therefore has to mean more than getting a family safely into the United States. Bringing children out of a war and giving them the opportunity to build a future here also means caring about what happens five years later. Schools, families, community organizations, and local authorities are often in a better position than federal counterterrorism agencies to recognize when a teenager is becoming disconnected, falling into criminal activity, or moving toward extremist networks.
After taking in a refugee population of Afghan kids, we can’t ignore it. There is an important space between treating a struggling teenager as a terrorism suspect and pretending concerning behavior does not matter because discussing radicalization is politically uncomfortable. That space is where prevention has to happen.
When the Network Becomes Part of the Risk
That brings us to another type of youth network worth watching: street crews and gangs.
A gang is already a trusted network, often built around loyalty, reputation, shared identity, and a willingness to take risks for one another. Where crime or violence is already normalized, some of the barriers an extremist recruiter would otherwise have to overcome may already be lower.
If extremist ideology enters that environment, it does not need to transform the entire group to matter. One teenager can begin sharing jihadist propaganda with friends who already trust him. Grievances can take on an ideological explanation, and violence can be reframed as serving a larger cause. Most members may never become interested in extremism, but the teenager who does is no longer exploring those beliefs alone. A gang does not have to become a terrorist cell for the network to become part of the risk.
There is history worth considering in the United States. Fremont, California, and the surrounding East Bay have been home to one of the country’s largest Afghan-American communities for decades, and Afghan youth gangs emerged there long before the 2021 evacuation from Kabul. Historical reporting described young Afghan men involved in street violence, including a group known as SAG, or “Save Afghan Girls,” whose members reportedly targeted non-Afghan males who dated Afghan girls. More recent Afghan-identified street crews have remained visible in the Bay Area.
That history does not establish a jihadist connection. It establishes that young Afghan males organizing into street groups around identity, loyalty, and community ties is not new in the United States. There have also been reports of Afghan youth gang activity in Colorado, although the public record remains too limited to establish the structure of those groups or any ideological component.
What matters is whether the behavior and influences inside an existing network begin to change. A group of teenagers committing crimes presents one problem. If members begin circulating jihadist propaganda, supporting terrorist organizations, developing relationships with extremists, or combining access to weapons with discussions about ideological violence, it becomes a different problem. We have seen that overlap develop elsewhere.
What Europe Can Teach Us
The jihadist networks connected to the November 2015 Paris attacks and March 2016 Brussels bombings included men with histories of drugs, robbery, stolen vehicles, and other street crime. Some also had neighborhood and friendship relationships that predated their radicalization.
Researchers call the overlap between these worlds the crime-terror nexus. When extremist ideology reaches someone already embedded in a criminal network, trusted relationships, access to weapons, familiarity with violence, and other capabilities may already exist. Belgium showed how dangerous that overlap could become when people authorities knew primarily as criminals moved into jihadist networks.
Swedish research found substantial criminal histories among jihadists who traveled to Syria and Iraq, including individuals with gang backgrounds. Jihadist ideology can give a different purpose to dynamics already present in some criminal environments, redirecting grievance, loyalty, and violence toward an ideological cause.
Europe is now seeing the problem reach an even younger population. Researchers at West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center identified 42 minors arrested across Europe in 2024 for involvement in Islamic State attacks, attack planning, or propaganda activity. During one seven-day period, authorities in France, Belgium, and Switzerland arrested 11 teenagers linked through a closed online group. NCTC has highlighted the broader trend of young people increasingly appearing both as targets of terrorist recruitment and as perpetrators of terrorism.
Europe shows us what can happen when criminal networks, adolescent relationships, and extremist ideology begin to intersect. The pieces are not all together in the United States. That is why this is the time to pay attention.
Before the FBI
These are young people, and in many cases there may still be time to reach them before extremist beliefs become plans for violence. Parents may notice changes in behavior or new relationships.
Schools may encounter threats or a fixation on violence. Police and juvenile authorities may see weapons or criminal behavior, while gang investigators may understand the peer network around a teenager. None of those things alone indicates terrorism. They become more concerning when extremist ideology, terrorist propaganda, violent rhetoric, or contact with extremists begins appearing alongside them.
Families also need somewhere to turn before calling the FBI feels like their only option. Schools and local authorities need to recognize when ordinary adolescent misconduct begins taking on an ideological component. Communities dealing with youth gangs need to notice when the influences inside those networks change. And when a child has already demonstrated extremist behavior, we need to think beyond the immediate crisis to what happens next.
Prevention is not prediction. It is recognizing when warning signs are moving in the same direction while there are still choices available. Once a teenager has acquired weapons, selected a target, attempted to travel overseas to join ISIS, or begun preparing an attack, those choices become much narrower. We are no longer trying to redirect a kid who may be heading toward violence. We are trying to stop him before someone gets hurt.
We do not know how large this problem will become. The warning signs in the United States are still scattered, and the crime-terror overlap seen in parts of Europe has not fully developed here. That uncertainty is not a reason to ignore what we are seeing. It is a reason to pay attention while there is still time to do something about it.
There is still time to reach some of these kids before the FBI has to. Finding them earlier is not about finding more terrorists. It is about having fewer of them. The path toward terrorism can begin looking like something else. The time to recognize it is while it still does.
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