Napolitano warns of homegrown terrorists

NEW YORK, Dec. 3 (UPI) -- Al-Qaida sympathizers within U.S. borders are a threat domestically and abroad, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said.

Napolitano, addressing the American Israel Friendship League in New York Wednesday, said a rash of recent domestic arrests should "remove any remaining comfort from the notion that if we fight the terrorists abroad, we won't have to fight them here," The Washington Post reported Thursday.

Her comments came one day after President Barack Obama announced an additional 30,000 U.S. troops would be deployed to Afghanistan and warned that extremists have been dispatched from the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region -- considered a safe haven for terrorists -- to the United States " to commit more acts of terror."

"Home-based terrorism is here," Napolitano said. "And like violent extremism abroad, it will be part of the threat picture that we must now confront. ... Individuals sympathetic to al-Qaida and its affiliates, as well as those inspired by the group's ideology, are present in the U.S., and would like to attack the homeland or plot overseas attacks."