Trump urges ending visa program that let terror suspect into US
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said he will ask Congress to immediately terminate a 1990 immigration program that admitted an immigrant from Uzbekistan charged with Tuesday’s ISIS-inspired truck attack in Manhattan that left eight dead.
“We need to get much less politically correct,” Trump told reporters at a Wednesday Cabinet meeting.
“The terrorist came into our country through what is called the ‘Diversity Visa Lottery Program,’ a Chuck Schumer beauty. I want merit based (immigration),” Trump tweeted Wednesday morning.
Trump also said he would consider sending the suspect to the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
After Trump took to Twitter, New York Democrats struck back. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio responded, “I don’t think anyone should be politicizing this.”
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said that Trump’s tweets “were not helpful.” He added, “You play into the hands of the terrorists to the extent you disrupt and divide … The tone now should be the exact opposite.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., took to the Senate floor where he compared Trump with President George W. Bush. After Sept. 11, Schumer said, Bush invited then-Sen. Hillary Clinton and Schumer to the White House.
“President Bush in a moment of national tragedy understood the meaning of his high office and sought to bring our country together,” Schumer intoned. “President Trump, where is your leadership?”
Schumer then called on Trump to rescind cuts in anti-terrorism funding that the president had proposed in his most recent budget.
The back-and-forth had settled into a familiar partisan divide – tougher immigration policy versus more anti-terrorism spending.
Suspect entered U.S. in 2010
The suspect in Tuesday’s truck attack has been identified as Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov, 29, a legal, permanent U.S. resident. He lived in Ohio and Florida before moving to Paterson, New Jersey, around June, authorities said.
Department of Homeland Security Press Secretary Tyler Q. Houlton confirmed that Saipov “was admitted to the U.S. upon presentation of a passport with a valid diversity immigrant visa to U.S. Customs and Border Protection in 2010.”
The diversity visa lottery system provides some 50,000 visas annually to foreign nationals from countries with relatively low rates of immigration.
Schumer was a co-sponsor of the 1990 legislation that created the diversity visa lottery; that measure passed with a large bipartisan vote and was signed by President George H.W. Bush.
Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., a frequent Trump critic, came to Schumer’s defense Wednesday when he pointed out that the New York senator also co-authored compromise legislation that would have eliminated the lottery program in 2013.
“I know, I was there,” Flake tweeted. The Democratic-led Senate passed the measure with 14 Republican votes, but the bill never made it to a vote in the GOP-controlled House, which objected to the measure’s main goal — to set a path to citizenship for most undocumented immigrants.
Jessica Vaughan of the pro-enforcement Center for Immigration Studies said in an email that the diversity visa lottery should go because “it’s never a good idea to just select immigrants randomly without regard to their skills, education, or even family ties to the United States.” She also said the program is “rampant with fraud” and a large number of recipients come from “terror-prone countries, who then sponsor their relatives by chain migration.”
Trump said that Saipov was the “point of contact” for 23 immigrants. The Department of Homeland Security would not comment on that assertion.
Trump favors merit-based approach
In August, Trump endorsed the Reforming American Immigration for Strong Employment or RAISE Act, which would institute a merit-based approach to immigration and end the diversity visa lottery.
Ibrahim Hooper of the Council on American-Islamic Relations countered that visa recipients under the program “still are vetted and still go through a process.”
Hooper faulted Trump for urging caution — rather than jumping to conclusions about gun laws — after the Oct. 1 Las Vegas shooting, then calling for a change in immigration law after the Manhattan killing.
“It’s always very interesting to see the difference in response (of) President Trump to people who commit violence who are not Muslim and those who are,” he said.
White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders tried to turn down the heat a little at Wednesday’s briefing. Sanders said she wanted to make it clear that “the president does not blame Sen. Schumer and doesn’t feel that the senator is responsible for the attack. We believe very strongly that the individual who carried out the attack is responsible and no one else.”
On the issue of funding, Schumer’s office cited a proposed 25 percent cut in funding in the Urban Area Security Initiative and cuts to the State Homeland Security Grant Program.
Office of Management and Budget Press Secretary Meghan Burris responded, “Fighting terrorism is among the president’s top priorities, which is why it is worth noting that the two largest grant programs to fight urban terrorism are carrying more than $1.9 billion in unspent balances. If these programs are in need of additional funding, we must start with the money that has already been allocated.”
Contact Debra J. Saunders at dsaunders@reviewjournal.com or at 202-662-7391. Follow @DebraJSaunders on Twitter.