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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 i
