WASHINGTON (TNND) — The horrific attack in New Orleans on New Year’s Day brought a chilling revelation about the suspect.

During a press Conference Wednesday, Alethea Duncan, assistant special agent in charge at the FBI in New Orleans said, "An ISIS flag was located on the trailer hitch of the vehicle.”

While Shamsud-din Jabbar was born and raised in Texas, the ISIS flag and apparent videos he posted discussing plans to kill his family and join ISIS resurrected questions about the terror group considered by some to be defeated.

In an interview with The National News Desk Thursday, Timothy Clancy, an assistant research scientist at the University of Maryland's National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), said ISIS never went away.

The short answer is ISIS never went away. They shifted what we perceive them as but they’re still out there activating that grievance and providing that narrative to get people in a violent path to radicalize."

Clancy said the group has had success praying on people, including Americans online, finding success with those who have a grievance or perceived grievance, a strongly held belief that their problems are someone else’s fault.

When this radicalization proceeds, the individuals who go down that violent path begin to view themselves as warrior or a pseudo commander. They take on this identity that I have to do something violent on behalf of others to communicate this message.”

The New Orleans suspect’s ISIS sympathies appeared to prompt Donald Trump to post on Truth Social, "Radical Islamic terrorism, and other forms of violent crime, will become so bad in America that it will become hard to even imagine or believe."

Trump blamed President Biden’s "open border policies," although both the New Orleans suspect, as well as the suspect in a Tesla Cybertruck explosion in Las Vegas, were citizens born here and had served in the U.S. military.

Trump has vowed to begin the largest mass deportation in history in just a few weeks and has often pointed to crimes committed by migrants and the massive increase in those coming to the country on the terror watch list.

The number of those arrested between ports of entry was zero in 2019, rising to a shocking 169 in 2023 and 103 in 2024, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.