Former police chief recalls foiling border terror case

It was about 2 a.m. on a moonless October night in 1987 when the police chief of a small northern Vermont town spotted a man carrying a black bag and walking down the railroad tracks from Canada toward a waiting van about a mile south of the border.

The man turned out to be linked to a Lebanese extremist group. And in his bag, later recovered from a ditch, were a ski mask and a propane-canister bomb.

"If it had been two minutes later, they would have been in the van and gone on their way, and I'd have never known the difference," recalled Richford's long-retired police chief, Richard Jewett, who won numerous awards for apparently foiling an attack. "I guess luck was on my side."

FILE - In this June 22, 1988 file photo, Georges Younan, right, one of three defendants of Lebanese descent from Montreal, Canada, is led into federal court in handcuffs in Burlington, Vt. Younan and the two others were caught smuggling the makings of a bomb into the U.S., on Oct. 23, 1987, in Richford, Vt. All three were convicted and sent to federal prison. (AP PhotoToby Talbot, File)

Whether it was luck or not, Jewett beat the odds in a way. While President Donald Trump, in arguing for a border wall, has said repeatedly that terrorists are slipping across from Mexico, known cases of extremists entering the U.S. through its land borders to the north or the south are exceedingly rare.

Even then, State Department reports on terrorism have expressed more concern about the Canadian border than the Mexican one because Canada, unlike Mexico, has been home to "violent extremists inspired by terrorist groups such as ISIS and al-Qaida and their affiliates and adherents," according to a 2017 paper.

A study issued last month by the libertarian Cato Institute found that between 1975 and 2017, seven people from "special interest" countries — states tied at least loosely to terrorism — were convicted of planning attacks on U.S. soil. Four of those individuals entered illegally from Canada, none from Mexico.

In this Jan. 17, 2019 photo, former town police chief Richard Jewett talks about the night in 1987 when he apprehended a man who carried a bomb across the border from Canada into the United States in Richford, Vt.. At a time when terrorism is part of the discussion about whether to build a wall on the U.S. southern border to protect the country, the Richford incident was the only one of its kind when anyone was caught trying to enter the United States illegally as part of a terrorist plot. (AP PhotoWilson Ring)

The only known terrorists who crossed illegally from Mexico in the 42-year span covered by the Cato study were three ethnic Albanians from Macedonia who came as children with their parents in 1984 and, in their 20s, were arrested in a foiled plot to attack the Army's Fort Dix in New Jersey, in 2007.

"This shows how rare it is for people to try to enter the U.S. illegally as terrorists by crossing a border," said Alex Nowrasteh, one of the authors of the Cato study. "It shows how Mexico is not how these folks typically try to enter and the terrorism justification for building the wall is probably the weakest."

In fact, most people with terroristic intent come into the country by air and are typically in the United States legally. The 19 men who carried out the 9/11 attacks all entered the country legally. The brothers who carried out the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing that killed three people entered the U.S. on tourist visas with their families and were later granted asylum.

FILE - In this June 22, 1988 file photo, Walid Kabbani, right, one of three defendants of Lebanese descent from Montreal, Canada, is led into federal court in handcuffs in Burlington, Vt. Kabbani and the two others were caught smuggling the makings of a bomb into the U.S., on Oct. 23, 1987, in Richford, Vt. All three were convicted and sent to federal prison. (AP PhotoToby Talbot, File)

On the Canadian border, Ahmed Ressam was caught by border agents in December 1999 after he tried to enter the United States at Port Angeles, Washington, with bomb components in the trunk of his car. It was later determined Ressam planned to attack the Los Angeles airport during the millennium.

"The evidence shows that if we are going to talk about terrorism, there is actually good reason to think more carefully about the U.S.'s northern border than the U.S.'s southern border," said Emily Gilbert, a terrorism expert and director of the Canadian studies program at the University of Toronto.

The U.S.-Canadian border is over 5,500 miles (8,900 kilometers) long, more than 2½ times the length of the U.S. border with Mexico, and is crossed by numerous roads and railroad tracks, with many wide-open stretches. In Richford, the border cuts through farm fields and forests with occasional granite markers in the ground.

FILE - In this Oct. 28, 1987 file photo, two of three Canadians of Lebanese descent are led into federal court in Burlington, Vt. Walid Nicolas Kabbani, left, and Walid Mourad were caught with a third accomplice smuggling the makings of a bomb into the U.S., on Oct. 23, 1987, in Richford, Vt. All three were convicted and sent to federal prison. (AP PhotoToby Talbot, File)

Worries about terrorists crossing from Canada have been reduced by the close cooperation between the two countries, and security has been tightened since 9/11. Hundreds more Border Patrol agents are stationed along the border (authorities won't disclose the total), surveillance has been enhanced with such things as electronic sensors and helicopters, and those trying to cross the border must show a passport or certain other documents, none of which were required before Sept. 11, 2001.

In the Richford incident, Walid Kabbani was seized at the border, and his two accomplices in the van were arrested at a local hotel the morning after. U.S. authorities said the three men, Lebanese-born Canadians from Montreal, were members of an extremist group responsible for the 1982 assassination of Lebanese President-elect Bashir Gemayel.

Federal officials were never able to say for sure what their intended target was. All three were convicted or pleaded guilty to explosives and immigration violations and went to prison, getting out in the 1990s.

FILE - In this June 22, 1988 file photo, Walid Mourad, center, one of three defendants of Lebanese descent from Montreal, Canada, is led into federal court in handcuffs in Burlington, Vt. Mourad and the two others were caught smuggling the makings of a bomb into the U.S., on Oct. 23, 1987, in Richford, Vt. All three were convicted and sent to federal prison. (AP PhotoToby Talbot, File)

Terrorism was the last thing on Jewett's mind when he became police chief in the border town, which has around 2,300 people and is about 2,000 miles from the Mexican border. He said the current debate about a border wall with Mexico and the recent 35-day government shutdown it provoked has gone too far.

"I do also understand we need some protections on our borders. And I just don't know what it is," Jewett said. "It's hard."

AP researcher Rhonda Shafner in New York contributed to this report.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — Investigations into the Brown University mass shooting and the slaying of a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor shifted Thursday when authorities discovered evidence they say indicates they were committed by the same man, who was then found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

The attacker at Brown killed two students and wounded nine others in an engineering building on Saturday. Some 50 miles (80 kilometers) away MIT professor Nuno F.G. Loureiro was killed Monday night in his home in the Boston suburb of Brookline.

The FBI had earlier said it knew of no links between the cases.

Here are some answers to questions about the attacks and investigations:

Claudio Neves Valente, 48, a former Brown student and Portuguese national, was found dead in a New Hampshire storage facility after a six-day search that spanned several New England states.

Brown University President Christina Paxson said Neves Valente was enrolled at Brown from the fall of 2000 to the spring of 2001. He was admitted to the graduate school to study physics beginning in September 2000.

“He has no current affiliation with the university,” she said.

Neves Valente had studied at Brown on a student visa. He eventually obtained legal permanent residence status in September 2017. His last known residence was in Miami.

There are still “a lot of unknowns” in regard to motive, Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha said. “We don’t know why now, why Brown, why these students and why this classroom,” he said.

Loureiro, 47, who was married, joined MIT in 2016 and was named last year to lead the school’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center, where he worked to advance clean energy technology and other research. The center, one of MIT’s largest labs, had more than 250 people working across seven buildings when he took the helm. He was a professor of physics and nuclear science and engineering.

Valente and Loureiro attended the same academic program at a university in Portugal between 1995 and 2000, Foley said. Loureiro graduated from the physics program at Instituto Superior Técnico, Portugal’s premier engineering school, in 2000, according to his MIT faculty page.

The same year, Neves Valente was let go from a position at the Lisbon university, according to an archive of a termination notice from the school’s then-president in February 2000.

Authorities released several security videos of a person thought might have carried out the Brown attack. They showed the individual standing, walking and even running along the streets, but their face is masked or turned away in all of them.

Police say a witness then gave investigators a key tip: he saw someone who looked like the person of interest with a Nissan sedan displaying Florida plates. That enabled Providence police officers to tap into a network of more than 70 street cameras operated around the city by surveillance company Flock Safety. Those cameras track license plates and other vehicle details.

After leaving Rhode Island for Massachusetts, Providence officials said the suspect stuck a Maine license plate over the rental car’s plate to help conceal his identity.

Video footage showed Neves Valente entering an apartment building near Loureiro’s. About an hour later, he was seen entering the New Hampshire storage facility where he was later found dead, Foley said.

The two students who were killed and the nine others wounded were studying for a final in a first-floor classroom in an older section of the engineering building when the shooter walked in and opened fire.

Those killed were 19-year-old sophomore Ella Cook and 18-year-old freshman MukhammadAziz Umurzokov. Cook, whose funeral is Monday, was active in her Alabama church and served as vice president of the Brown College Republicans. Umurzokov’s family immigrated to the U.S. from Uzbekistan when he was a child, and he aspired to be a doctor.

As for the wounded, six were in stable condition Thursday, officials said. The other three were discharged.

Neves Valiente gained permanent residency status through a green card lottery program, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a post on X.

She said President Donald Trump ordered her to pause the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services program.

The diversity visa program makes up to 50,000 green cards available each year by lottery to people from countries that are little represented in the United States, many of them in Africa.

The lottery was created by Congress, and the move is almost certain to invite legal challenges.

Whittle reported from Portland, Maine. Contributing were Associated Press reporters Kimberlee Kruesi, Amanda Swinhart, Robert F. Bukaty, Matt O’Brien and Jennifer McDermott in Providence; Michael Casey in Boston; Heather Hollingsworth in Mission, Kansas; Kathy McCormack and Holly Ramer in Concord, New Hampshire; Christopher Weber in Los Angeles; and Alanna Durkin Richer, Mike Balsamo and Eric Tucker in Washington.

This combo image made with photos provided by the FBI and the Providence, Rhode Island, Police Department shows a person of interest in the shooting that occurred at Brown University in Providence, R.I., Saturday, Dec. 13, 2025. (FBI/Providence Police Department via AP)

A memorial of flowers and signs lay outside the Barus and Holley engineering building at Brown University, on Hope Street in Providence, R.I., on Tuesday, Dec 16, 2025. (AP Photo/Matt OBrien)

A Brown University student leaves campus, Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2025, after all classes, exams and papers were canceled for the rest of the Fall 2025 semester following the school shooting, in Providence, R.I. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)