If Americans fighting alongside the Islamic State (ISIS) try to return to the United States, they should be treated like criminals, says the former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Peter Hoekstra.
"They either need to revoke those passports or identify those people who have fought with jihadi groups when they come back to the United States," Hoekstra told J.D. Hayworth on "America's Forum" on
Newsmax TV Monday.
Story continues below video.
Note: Watch Newsmax TV now on
DIRECTV Ch. 349 and
DISH Ch. 223
Get Newsmax TV on your cable system –
Click Here Now
"They're eligible for some sort of criminal prosecution," he explained. "They are fighting with the enemy."
FBI Director James Comey told CBS during an appearance on "60 Minutes" Sunday that "ultimately, an American citizen, unless their passport is revoked, is entitled to come back."
Comey added that if "someone who has fought with ISIS with an American passport and wants to come back, we will track them very carefully."
Story continues below video.
J.D. Gordon, the former Pentagon spokesman under former President George W. Bush told Newsmax that "we already know there's about 100 Americans or more over there in Iraq and Syria fighting alongside them, and several thousand westerners of those 30,000 fighters that [ISIS] has."
"These people have U.S. passports, Canadian passports, European passports, they could easily come back and strike us," he explained.
"There was one young man from Florida, he was 22-years old, born and raised there in Florida, his mom was American, dad was Palestinian, he went over there to fight in Syria, and he blew himself up in a truck bomb outside of a Syria military base," he said.
Comey also told CBS that the ISIS militants have worked and "may still be working on an effort to attack the United States or our allies, and looking to do it very, very soon."
"We know these guys can come back and strike us, and so we do have an imminent threat before us," Gorden contends.
"I would just hope that the FBI is as transparent as they can be with us," he added.
Hoekstra said in his experience "imminent threats to the United States" could be chatter or "an increase in chatter, or specific incidents or events that they wanted to make happen."
Gordon said that even before the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001 "there weren't that many signs . . . before the actual attacks."
"We didn't really know what al-Qaida could do until they did it," he added.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.