WASHINGTON (JTA) — Painting a grim picture of Jewish vulnerability in the United States, a top U.S. security official said that the vast majority of funds earmarked to secure nonprofits goes to Jewish institutions because their need is the most acute.
Alejandro Mayorkas, the deputy Homeland Security secretary, speaking Wednesday to the Orthodox Union’s annual leadership mission to Washington, D.C., said rising extremism in the United States and its threat to the Jewish community helped keep him awake nights.
He said the threat had shifted in the past year from the relatively small number of Americans who were radicalized overseas to homegrown extremists whom the Islamic State terrorist group had reached through the internet. Mayorkas said the FBI was tracking more than 1,000 suspected extremists across the U.S., and they were to be found in all 50 states.