U.S. officials warn of increase of ISIS foreign fighters

Nicholas Rasmussen, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, said more than 20,000 fighters, from more than 90 countries, have traveled to the ISIS battlefield, according to testimony CNN obtained in advance of a House Homeland Security Committee hearing scheduled for Wednesday.

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Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, also expressed alarm in his anticipated opening statement, about small-scale radicalization in the United States that may be hard to detect. The most glaring example is the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, but there have been other so-called ‘lone-wolf’ attacks that were successfully thwarted in recent times.

“I wrote to the President recently as part of my ongoing investigation and raised concerns that we have no lead agency in charge of countering domestic radicalization and no line item for it in the budgets of key departments and agencies,” McCaul said in his prepared opening statement. “I am also concerned that the few programs we do have in place are far too small to confront a challenge that has grown so quickly.”

CNN