In 2015, Mohamed Bailor Jalloh, a naturalized American citizen born in Sierra Leone, traveled to Africa and met with ISIS in Nigeria. He began communicating with a terrorist online who, thankfully, was an FBI informant. Jalloh was arrested and convicted for providing material support to ISIS and was sentenced to 11 years in federal prison.Jalloh should have been denaturalized and deported after his conviction. That should have been the end of the story. However, as a naturalized citizen, he was allowed to remain in the country.In 2024, he was released from prison early, and on March 12 of this year, he walked into a classroom at Old Dominion University and opened fire, killing Lieutenant Colonel Brandon Shah, a retired Army officer. We cannot allow our immigration system to be wielded as a weapon against our nation.Shah was from Staunton, Virginia. He enlisted in the army in 2003 and flew an Apache helicopter over Iraq, Afghanistan, and Eastern Europe. He survived 600 hours of combat in the Middle East only to be gunned down by a terrorist as he taught a class here in the American homeland. This horrific attack should never have happened. When a foreign-born terrorist is convicted of conspiring against our homeland, no American should ever have to worry that he will attack again. My new bill, the Denaturalization and Expulsion of Persons Who Orchestrate Radical Terrorism Act, will guarantee that it never happens again.The DEPORT Act makes it clear that any naturalized citizen who commits an act of terrorism, plots to commit an attack, joins a terrorist organization, or otherwise aids and abets terrorists is denaturalized and deported. In other words, Jalloh’s conviction for supporting terrorists would have been his last act on American soil. Naturalization is intended to allow immigrants to pledge total allegiance to the United States. Terrorism is the antithesis of that pledge. This treasonous act represents everything we stand against. Any naturalized citizen found guilty of terrorism-related charges was never loyal to our country and should be removed from our homeland immediately. Most Americans are understandably shocked to learn that this is not already the law. However, as FBI Director Kash Patel posted on X recently, denaturalizing terrorists is “extremely difficult.” To do so, the government must prove that the person in question fraudulently obtained his or her citizenship. Under current law, joining a terrorist organization after naturalization is treated as prima facie evidence of such fraud, but only if it happens within five years of becoming a citizen.The DEPORT Act extends this five-year window for denaturalization to 10 years. It creates a new pathway to denaturalize lone-wolf terrorists — those inspired by online propaganda and foreign extremist ideology who act without formally joining a designated terrorist organization.RELATED: Austin’s ‘Property of Allah’ shooter is immigration failure made flesh Stephanie Tacy/NurPhoto/Getty ImagesCritically, the bill also directs the Secretary of Homeland Security to revise the application for citizenship to include an attestation requirement that will force every future applicant to swear under oath that they have no intent to commit terrorism against the United States. If this had been the law when Jalloh was naturalized, he would easily have been deported upon his conviction. Passing this legislation would be common sense at any point in American history. We cannot allow our immigration system to be wielded as a weapon against our nation. But it is especially sensible today, as more than 50 million people currently living in the United States were born in foreign countries. This represents almost 15% of the total U.S. population. Tens of thousands of these immigrants hail from countries with active terrorist networks. Worse yet, many were welcomed to America with little to no vetting under the Biden administration. Jalloh’s terrorism is not an isolated incident. Ndiaga Diagne, the shooter who attacked a beer garden in Austin, Texas, on March 1, was a naturalized citizen from Senegal. This gunman, who wore a “Property of Allah” shirt, killed two people and injured 14 others. Similarly, Ayman Mohamad Ghazali, the Lebanese-born man who reportedly rammed his pickup truck into Temple Israel in Michigan last month, was a naturalized citizen. The status quo is untenable.Ensuring that our nation has the ability to denaturalize and deport convicted terrorists isn’t radical. It is the bare minimum we can do to claw back our sovereignty and protect American citizens against the ticking time bomb within our borders.