SAN DIEGO, United States – A Somali woman, whose brother is a high-ranking leader in the extremist group ISIS-Somalia, has been sentenced for asylum fraud in the United States after a counter-terrorism investigation uncovered her familial ties, the Justice Department announced.
Sowda Ahmed Mohamud, 27, was sentenced in a San Diego federal court after pleading guilty to making false statements on immigration documents and in testimony. She will be deported from the United States.
Her case was unraveled by an FBI-led Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) after she illegally crossed the US-Mexico border in March 2024 and was flagged by a government database as a potential match for an individual with suspected terrorism-related activities.
According to prosecutors, Sowda’s attempts to deceive immigration authorities by hiding relatives in the US inadvertently led investigators to her brother, Mohamed Ahmed Qahiye, a key figure in ISIS-Somalia responsible for fundraising and weapons procurement for the terror group.
Uncovering terrorism ties
The investigation into Sowda began after US Border Patrol agents near San Diego arrested her. In her asylum application and sworn testimony, she falsely claimed she had never applied for legal status in any other country and intentionally concealed the fact that she had a sister living in the United States.
It was the identification of this sister that enabled agents to discover her connection to Qahiye, who was placed on the US Treasury’s Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) and Blocked Persons list in November 2022 for his role in supporting ISIS-Somalia.
ISIS-Somalia is a relatively small but persistent splinter group of the larger al-Shabaab insurgency, primarily based in the mountainous regions of Somalia’s semi-autonomous Puntland state. It is led by Sheikh Abdulqadir Mumin, an extremist ideologue who pledged allegiance to the Islamic State in 2015.
According to the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), Qahiye and Mumin met with Iranian nationals in early 2020 who paid over $10,000 to the group’s leadership. Separately, the two leaders sought to procure a major arms shipment from Yemen that included rocket-propelled grenade launchers and Russian-designed machine guns.
From border crossing to removal
After a year-long investigation, the evidence gathered by the JTTF was used to dismiss Sowda’s asylum claim with prejudice, meaning she is permanently barred from seeking that protection in the US.
In her plea agreement, she admitted to lying about her prior attempts to gain lawful status in the United Kingdom, Brazil, and the United States.
Sowda, who was held in immigration custody for 15 months, was sentenced to 48 days already served and will be removed from the country.
“The prosecution of Mohamud for asylum fraud also represents our commitment to ensuring that individuals who might pose a threat to our national security due to their family ties to foreign terrorist organizations are swiftly removed from the United States,” said US Attorney Adam Gordon in a statement.
Special Agent in Charge Mark Dargis of the FBI’s San Diego office added that the case “demonstrates the FBI’s unwavering commitment to rooting out anyone with potential ties to known foreign terrorist organizations intent on harming the United States.”
The case highlights the intense scrutiny applied to asylum seekers at the US border and the use of multi-agency task forces to investigate potential security threats concealed within fraudulent immigration claims.