A 20-year-old New York college student has been taken into custody after he told a government informant that he planned to detonate a pressure-cooker bomb on behalf of the ISIS terrorist group, USA Today reported.

Munther Omar Saleh, a student at the Queens-based Vaughn College of Aeronautics and Technology, said he was going to "try to do an op" in the nation's largest city, the New York Daily News noted based on court filings.

In their criminal complaint, federal authorities described Saleh as a "fervent supporter" of the terrorist organization, which controls large swaths of territory across Iraq and Syria and is widely known for its brutal treatment of residents and beheadings of foreign captives.

On Twitter, Saleh openly supported ISIS activities, including the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris in January and the beheading of Japanese journalist Kenji Goto, CBS New York said based on court documents. The student also tweeted that al-Qaeda "could be getting too moderate," according to New York's ABC 7.

Saleh was arrested on June 7 after Investigators pulled him over on a Queens highway, CBS New York noted. He tried to attack the officers and on Saturday appeared in Brooklyn Federal Court.

"Saleh emailed himself information from the Internet regarding the construction of a pressure cooker bomb," the New York Daily News said the Brooklyn Federal Court complaint detailed. Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the brothers who killed 3 and injured more than 250 at the 2013 Boston Marathon, had used similar explosive devices.

Later, "Saleh performed Internet searches for the terms 'watch,' 'casio,' and 'vacuum,' (and) these searches reflect Saleh's efforts to identify and obtain components required to create an explosive device," the complaint added, according to the newspaper. The student was also surfing the Web for images of New York landmarks and tourist attractions on May 28, it noted.

Saleh had been taking courses on electrical circuitry; it was not clear whether he has hired a lawyer, according to the Wall Street Journal.