The U.S. Department of Justice announced Monday that it had charged a man with plotting to target synagogues for attacks.

Mohamed Sagha, 22, who lives in Wayne in Passaic County, N.J., believed he was communicating with a member of the terrorist group ISIS, when in reality he was talking to an undercover agent. From December 2025 to June 2026, the would-be terrorist relayed plans for “potential attacks on targets within the United States, including places of worship.”

According to court filings, “he was contemplating carrying out an attack of his own, possible on a National Guard location or on a Jewish place of worship” near his home and planned to travel to areas in Syria where ISIS operates in secret.

The DOJ also said that he went so far as to purchase a virtual private network to be used as an encryption tool for the person he believed to be working for ISIS.

“Those who seek to advance the objectives of foreign terrorist organizations should expect a swift and coordinated response from federal law enforcement,” said Robert Frazer, U.S. attorney for the District of New Jersey.

“Based on my training and experience, had Sagha been communicating with an actual ISIS member and not a confidential source, he would have provided members of a terrorist organization with a tool capable of enhancing their operational security and ability to communicate and operate online with reduced risk of identification, thereby facilitating their planned acts of terrorism,” an FBI special agent wrote in the complaint.