A new book is shedding light on how foreign enemies have taken advantage of America’s lax immigration policy to flood the nation with threats. Investigative author and Breitbart News affiliate Peter Schweizer’s book “The Invisible Coup: How American Elites and Foreign Powers Use Immigration as a Weapon” details how the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist and jihadist groups use mass immigration as a means of conquest, and in particular of dominating and subverting Western nations like the U.S.

The Islamist strategy is rooted, Schweizer relates, in hijrah, one of the chief “pillars” of jihad. The idea of hijrah comes from when the founder of Islam, the Arab military leader Muhammad, and his religious devotees were forced to flee Mecca in 622 and seek refuge in Medina. Particularly in recent decades, hijrah, or migration, has become a prominent tool for jihadists to spread Islam via the infiltration of foreign nations. Some hadiths, which are maxims or instructions attributed to Muhammad, present hijrah as an “important weapon” against Western powers and stipulate that the process of hijrah will persist until a foreign nation is “won over” for Islam. Another hadith orders Muslims “to assemble, to listen; to obey; to immigrate; and to wage jihad for the sake of Allah.”

“Just as the radicals who ran the sanctuary city movement had a litmus test for Central American refugees coming to the United States with the goal of creating a revolutionary force,” Schweizer writes, “Islamists seek to import the revolution…”

According to the author, the R-1 religious worker visa program has been a particular target for jihadists, who often train imams in Muslim-majority nations and send them to the U.S. to run mosques and radicalize others. The majority of mosques in the U.S. are now led by foreign-born and usually foreign-trained imams, Schweizer notes.

He cites the example of Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, nicknamed “the Blind Sheik.” The Egyptian-born Abdel-Rahman entered the U.S. via the R-1 visa program, despite being a leader of the militant jihadist group Al-Jama’a al-Islamiyya. He spent three years in Egyptian prisons awaiting trial for issuing a fatwa, a legal ruling in Islamic sharia law, which resulted in the 1981 assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. Although acquitted of the conspiracy charges, Abdel-Rahman was exiled from Egypt and made his way to Afghanistan, where he befriended Osama bin Laden, becoming the head of al-Qaeda and its political/financial forerunner, Maktab al-Khadamat (MAK) in 1989, during the Soviet-Afghan War.

In 1990, Abdel-Rahman was granted an R-1 visa to visit the U.S. and assume command of MAK’s financial arms in New York City, despite being named on a terrorist watchlist. The U.S. State Department revoked his visa shortly afterwards, but the jihadi leader somehow managed to obtain legal permanent residence (LPR). In 1991, when attempting to return to the U.S. after visiting the Middle East, his terrorist status was flagged, and federal authorities began the process to revoke Abdel-Rahman’s LPR status. He was, however, still allowed to enter the U.S. in order to appeal the decision. When his appeal was denied, he claimed asylum; during his asylum hearings, it was revealed that the CIA had likely been shielding Abdel-Rahman and ensuring that he was given visas, due to his role in combatting the Soviets in the Middle East.

During his time in the U.S., Abdel-Rahman preached against the U.S., describing Americans as “descendants of apes and pigs who have been feeding from the dining tables of the Zionists, Communists, and colonialists” and encouraging Muslims to “tear [America] apart, destroy their economy, burn their companies, eliminate their interests, sink their ships, shoot down their planes, kill them on the sea, air, or land.” He issued a fatwa declaring it legal for Muslims to rob American banks and recorded numerous sermons in New York City, which were shipped on tape to Egypt, where they inspired an increase in terrorist attacks.

Egyptian state information service chief Mamdouh Beltagui said in a 1993 interview that Abdel-Rahman was using New York City as a “base” for directing jihadist terrorist activities abroad. “He passes on messages to his followers, giving orders about what they should do next and who they should target,” Beltagui stated. “We do not understand why the U.S. authorities have allowed him to enter the country.”

The FBI began investigating Abdel-Rahman in connection with the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, which killed six and injured over 1,000. It was discovered that the imam likely ordered the bombing and was planning terrorist attacks to destroy the United Nations headquarters, the Lincoln and Holland tunnels, the George Washington Bridge, and an FBI building. Abdel-Rahman was arrested in June of 1993 and convicted of seditious conspiracy in late 1995; in 1996, he was sentenced to life in solitary confinement without parole. He died in prison in 2017 at the age of 78.

Another example Schweizer points out is that of Iranian-born Usama Abdulghani, now based in Dearborn, Michigan, just outside of Detroit. Affiliated with Dearborn’s Hadi Institute Youth Community Center, Abdulghani has issued calls for Muslims in the U.S. to “fight Western civilization.” Abdulghani has declared that the “world needs to know” that Western civilization “is no longer a solution. These institutions are morally bankrupt. There is no other way, but God, or taklif — divine obligation-oriented, God-based resistance and rejection of the systems.”

Sheikh Muhammad Ayed, preaching from Jerusalem in 2015, explicated the jihadists’ immigration agenda, encouraging his fellow Muslims to remember that the “night will be over” and Islam will soon “trample them underfoot, Allah willing,” referring to Western nations. “We shall conquer their countries — whether you like it or not, oh Germans, oh Americans, oh French, oh Italians,” he declared. “We will breed children with them,” he added, potentially a veiled reference to mass rapes perpetrated by foreigners from Muslim-majority countries in Western nations.

Schweizer frames the jihadist use of mass immigration as a deliberate choice intended to eventually achieve conquest over Western nations. This weaponization of mass immigration programs coincides with the designs of Western left-wing elites, he claims, who similarly capitalize on broadscale immigration, largely from the third world, in order to effect social change and foment political revolution. He notes that pro-immigration activists within the U.S. have viewed mass immigration as a means of influencing elections. Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) chairman Eliseo Medina, for example, saw his friendship with then-newly-elected President Barack Obama as an opportunity to “change America profoundly” by importing millions of foreigners.

“When they voted in November,” Medina observed of newly-naturalized immigrants, “they voted overwhelmingly for progressive candidates. Barack Obama got two out of every three voters who showed up.” The left-wing labor leader explained that two things “matter for the progressive community: Number one: If we are to expand this electorate to win, the progressive community needs to solidly be on the side of immigrants. That will expand and solidify the progressive coalition for the future.” He continued, “Number two: [If] we reform the immigration laws, it puts 12 million people on the path to citizenship and eventually voters. Can you imagine if we have, even the same ratio, two out of three?” Even just eight million immigrants-turned-voters would “create a governing coalition for the long term, not just for an election cycle,” he contended.

Relying on polling data and carefully-curated quotes, Schweizer makes the case that newly-naturalized immigrants in the 21st century have overwhelmingly supported Democratic politicians and candidates and are, in fact, to the left of most mainstream and American-born Democrats on most issues, favoring socialist policies and expansive government programs, similar to those of the socialist governments in their home countries. “At the same time, migrants were shown to be less supportive of preserving America’s core values,” Schweizer notes. Foreign-born voters were significantly more likely than their American counterparts to uphold international law as a higher authority than the Constitution and to consider themselves “citizens of the world” instead of U.S. citizens.

“The partisan advantage for Democrats that Obama and Medina noted was not only real; it was growing. Four years after his election, in 2012, a YouGov survey found that recent immigrants favored Democrats over Republicans by almost four to one,” Schweizer warns. “Therefore, the hard work of ignoring citizenship standards to create these voters needed to continue.”