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FBI went to terror suspect’s home with sledgehammers, neighbor says

By Jessica Garrison
 and Irfan Khan
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A neighbor of one of the four California men charged in a terror plot to commit ‘violent jihad’ said she was shocked and scared when the FBI descended onto the fourplex on her quiet Upland street last week.

‘It was an ordinary day, I was feeding my son breakfast, and the next thing I know, there’s a lot of cars ... and FBI people with vests on ... and they had a pry bar and sledgehammers,’ said Jen Collins, 24.

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Collins lives near a house that public records indicate is associated with Miguel Alejandro Santana, one of four men charged with plotting to join Al Qaeda and the Taliban, according to a complaint unsealed Monday in U.S. District Court in Riverside.

DOCUMENT: 4 L.A.-area men arrested in alleged terror plot

Collins said she had little contact with her neighbors and did not know them well. According to the government’s complaint, Santana, 21, had been introduced to ‘radical Islamic doctrine’ by another man, Sohiel Imar Kabir, 34, and had influenced him to convert to Islam. Santana is accused of telling a confidential source working for the FBI that he planned to go to Afghanistan to take part in ‘violent jihad,’ according to the complaint.

Santana and Kabir allegedly posted terrorist audio and video files on Facebook pages and communicated via Skype when Kabir was overseas, federal authorities said in the complaint.

Over the course of the past several months, Santana made numerous plans to join Kabir, according to the 77-page complaint, which lays out a portrait of young men dedicated to their beliefs -- and willing to kill for them.

Santana allegedly said he wanted to go to Afghanistan because he believed the U.S. military bases there could easily be ambushed “from every direction.” He said the region was “more active” and expressed an interest in joining “AQ,” or Al Qaeda.

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‘The more I think about it, the more it excites me,’ Santana said, according to the complaint.

He was arrested last Friday at another location. That same day, about a dozen FBI agents spent several hours going in and out of the home in Upland carrying boxes.

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-- Jessica Garrison and Irfan Khan

L.A. Now
Jessica Garrison

Jessica Garrison writes about Northern California for the Los Angeles Times. She has previously covered Los Angeles City Hall, courts, education and the environment. As a reporter, her work has won a National Magazine Award for Public Service, among other honors. Work she has edited has won a George Polk Award and was a finalist for a Goldsmith Prize. Her book, “The Devil’s Harvest,” told the story of a contract killer who stalked Central Valley farm towns for years while authorities failed to bring him to justice. She is a graduate of UC Berkeley.

Irfan Khan

Irfan Khan was a staff photographer with the Los Angeles Times from 1996 to 2024. He previously served as a freelance photographer for the publication beginning in 1989. Khan started his career as a commercial photographer in 1973 in Pakistan and moved to Dubai in 1977, where he worked for an advertising agency and at a leading English newspaper. Khan’s assignments have taken across Southern California and the U.S. Internationally, he has photographed the Hajj in Saudi Arabia and war zones of the Pakistan/Afghanistan border in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. He was part of the team awarded the Pulitzer Prize in breaking news for coverage of the 2015 terrorist attack in San Bernardino. In his spare time, he enjoys listening to semi-classical music of the Indian subcontinent and playing cricket on Sundays.

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