Michael Teekaye first got on the FBI’s radar as a teenager in December 2019, when agents say he expressed an interest in extremist Islamic ideology on social media.

Teekaye said in his first interview with the FBI he didn’t want to join the Islamic State anymore, that his desire had waned after feeling used by the people he was talking with online. But in the following years, his behavior demonstrated he was taking “concrete steps” to leave the country and provide “material support to a terrorist organization,” according to an FBI criminal complaint filed Tuesday.

He was preparing to fly out of the country from Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport earlier this week when he was arrested.

Teekaye, a 21-year-old from Hanover, is being held without bond on a charge of providing material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization. The federal public defender’s office has been appointed to represent him, but no attorney has made an appearance in the case as of Wednesday afternoon.

Teekaye is on probation until September 2025 on a misdemeanor charge. Two years ago, Teekaye showed up at an elementary school in Columbia, holding a large fixed-blade knife and wearing a black face mask, Howard County Police reported. Teekaye was there to fight a classmate, he told the officers later, with whom he was having a conflict. It’s unclear who the classmate was. He had a pocketknife with him as well.

After federal agents arrested him, they searched his bedroom in his parents’ house, where they found Al Qaeda banners and a large machete, FBI Special Agent Jonathan D. Evans wrote in a 28-page affidavit.

The affidavit, filed in U.S. District Court in Baltimore, lays out how the FBI says Teekaye, who as a 16-year-old, was forcibly hospitalized after the Howard County Police Department reported in 2019 that he said he wanted to “cut the head off” of a classmate, went down the road that led to his arrest at the airport Tuesday.

The FBI’s affidavit is based on chats between Teekaye and undercover FBI employees on Instagram, Telegram, WhatsApp and in conversations with undercover agents. The affidavit lays out a series of chats about Teekaye joining various branches of the Islamic State in Africa and, at one point plotting to attack Jews or supporters of Israel living in Maryland.

“If I don’t become mujahid there I will become a mujahid here lol,” the FBI quoted Teekaye as saying in a WhatsApp chat with an undercover agent.

Teekaye’s social media account was disabled in 2019 for posts where he expressed support for extremist views. He told a covert FBI employee he “supported the state and the cause” and that he wanted to “carry out an attack” when he was older.

But he was already taking steps, he said — telling an informant he was talking to a “sister” in a refugee camp overseas. The camp was known for having women associated with ISIS. He asked the informant if they wanted to join him.

“I am willing but how would we get there?” the informant asked. “Do you have a contact who can help us?”

“No but it’s easier since it’s a poor country,” Teekaye wrote back. “We can just go to a village that they control.”

A few days later, the FBI reached out to Teekaye and his parents. They asked to search his phone and laptop.

Teekaye was forcibly hospitalized a second time. A Psychiatric Institute of Washington admission assessment found Teekaye was “obsessed with Muslim culture, posting social media with terrorist material, threatened to kill all Americans, threatened to kill [his] parents. His outpatient psychiatrist was concerned about his homicidal ideation and increasing aggression.”

Teekaye acknowledged he was a “danger” to himself and others, that he had said he wanted to kill his parents because he was angry at them.

“They kept getting me mad and angry,” he told his outpatient psychiatrist. “They were screaming at me and stuff … I guess because of what happened with the FBI and stuff … They found stuff on my phone … like radical Islam stuff.”

In an interview with federal agents a couple of days later, Teekaye said he felt people he been communicating with online had been using him. His desire to become a “fighter” had waned.

But three years later, in March 2023, he began talking to an undercover officer on Instagram and WhatsApp. He told her he wanted to go to Africa.

“Would you possibly want to go in the same path as me?” he asked.

“Which is?? Lol idk [I don’t know] your path,” the officer responded.

Teekaye told the agent he wanted to “make Allah’s works the highest” and establish “sharia” and “khilafah” or caliphate. He wanted to move to a country near an ISIS-controlled state. Then, when the time came, he was going to move.

Once the informant read the message, he was going to delete it, he told her. He wanted to destroy the evidence. He told her his accounts used to get shut down “all the time” and that the “feds” were keeping an eye on him.

If he didn’t make it overseas, he said, he was going to try to carry out an attack in Maryland, he told her. But that was plan B. Plan A was traveling overseas. He asked her if she was willing to go with him. She said she wasn’t looking for marriage.

Teekaye said he had a place in Columbia in mind, where he knew had “the most Israeli.” He wanted to target “any place or higher up person that supports Israel as a country.” She asked him if he meant Jewish people or those who supported Israeli government.

“Both,” he said.

Earlier this summer, Teekaye, who worked a several restaurants in Anne Arundel County, tried to purchase a gun, but he was denied due to being on probation. He had been going to Cindy’s Hot Shots, a shooting range in Severn, and had been able to buy ammunition.

He also met a woman on Instagram who claimed to be in a refugee camp in Syria. She talked of knowing people who could get him to Ethiopia and said from there he could travel to a neighboring country, likely Somalia, to join the fighters.

For months, Teekaye changed his mind a few times on both his beliefs about the people communicating with him and whether he should proceed with his plans. He worried about not blending in or getting caught by the FBI for planning the trip. He decided to delete the Telegram account to get rid of the evidence.

Besides, he said, he thought the Syrian woman’s account was “inconsistent,” making him believe she was “incompetent.”

A few days later, he told the undercover officer he was in contact with a Somali ISIS fighter. The fighter told him to fly first to Turkey, thenEthiopia. It would be easier to cross the border into Somalia.

He sent the officer a photo of an Ethiopian e-VISA the fighter had made him, set to expire in a few weeks.

Still, Teekaye said he wasn’t sure if ISIS was “the right group.” Maybe, he said, he should wait until “the right door opens” and should focus on bettering himself in the meantime.

In September, however, he reached out to the undercover officer again to tell her he had made up his mind. The Somalian fighter was preparing another visa to Ethiopia and a plane ticket. He was to leave as early as Sept. 30. Before leaving, though, he wanted to meet with the undercover officer. She offered to drive him to the airport when the time came.

The fighter booked him a British Airways flight departing Oct. 14 and returning a week later to avoid suspicion. His final destination was Turkey.

“Still want to get married once we’re both over there?” he asked the undercover officer.

“In shaa allah,” she said, meaning “If God wills it,” and adding, “Let’s focus on you getting there first and then we will continue this topic.”

She asked him a few days before the flight whether he was sure, reminding him there was no coming back. But Teekaye told her he had done his research. It seemed ISIS was the only group that had “the most true and sincere intentions.” He had no doubts.

The day of his flight, he went to the airport in a rideshare vehicle. The undercover officer had told him she could no longer drive him due to a family emergency.

Teekaye arrived early for his late evening flight. He proceeded through the security check point. At 5:59 p.m., he was arrested.

“I’ll just get out in 20 years and do something here. Okay? Okay? You will never stop me. Jihad will never stop,” Teekaye told officers. He was going to be 40 years old when he got out.

Teekaye began kicking one of the agents: “I’ll come, and I’ll kill your soldiers. I’ll kill you.”