Republican Sens. Ted Cruz and Jeff Sessions Thursday demanded that the Obama administration release the immigration history of the man and woman who committed the San Bernardino attacks, killing 14 people and wounding 21 others.
"In our struggle against terrorism, we are dealing with an enemy that has shown it is not only capable of bypassing U.S. screening, but of recruiting and radicalizing Muslim migrants after their entry to the United States," the senators said
in a letter to the White House. "The recruitment of terrorists in the U.S. is not limited to adult migrants, but to their young children and to their U.S.-born children, which is why family immigration history is necessary to understand the nature of the threat."
Cruz, who represents Texas, is seeking the Republican presidential nomination, while Sessions is a four-term senator from Alabama.
"We are dealing with an enemy that has shown it is not only capable of bypassing U.S. screening, but of recruiting and radicalizing Muslim migrants after their entry to the United States," Cruz and Sessions wrote in their letter to Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, and Secretary of State John Kerry.
The senators' letter comes as
CBS News tweeted a report that Malik passed the Department of Homeland Security’s "counterterrorism screening as part of her vetting" for a visa to the United States.
Federal officials maintained that they have a rigorous and effective screening process for people from countries with significant jihadist movements — Syria, for instance — making the immigration records of Farook and Malik a potentially significant piece of the debate over refugee policy, The National Review reports.
The senators cited news reports regarding the travels of the San Bernardino attackers, Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik.
The couple went on a shooting rampage at the Inland Regional Center on Wednesday before they were later shot to death in a gun battle with authorities.
Farook, 28, was the child of immigrants who came to the United States from Pakistan, while Malik, 27, came to this country from Saudi Arabia.
"Farook recently traveled to Saudi Arabia and returned with a new wife he had met online," the senators said in the letter. He also went to Saudi Arabia in 2013.
Sessions and Cruz said that the White House is still withholding immigration data on as many as 72 known terrorists, many of whom have been linked to recent events in the United States.
They requested that information nearly four months ago.
"A response is not only long overdue, but urgent in light of a series of assaults, including: the heinous attacks in San Bernardino, Calif., the earlier attacks on the military recruiting center in Chattanooga and the Boston bombing," the senators said.
They also noted that Congress was considering an omnibus budget bill that would "include funding for myriad immigration programs that have allowed for these events to occur."
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