Visa vetting lax on shooter, lawmaker says

WASHINGTON — The chairman of the House Judiciary Committee on Saturday said U.S. officials “sloppily approved” the visa application of Tashfeen Malik, one of the shooters who killed 14 people early this month in San Bernardino, Calif.

U.S. Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., reviewed Malik’s visa application and said immigration officials did not sufficiently vet the information that Malik provided to obtain a visa. He said the materials in the file did not conclusively show that Malik and her future husband, Sayed Farook, had met in person — a requirement for a foreigner seeking to obtain a K-1 fiancee visa.

Goodlatte’s review found that Malik’s application contained two items to show that the couple had met: A statement from Farook and copies of pages of each of their passports that showed visas to visit Saudi Arabia.

However, the passport stamps do not clearly demonstrate whether they were in that country at the same time or whether they were together while in that country. Malik’s passport pages show that she arrived in that country around June 4, 2013.

A translator who attempted to decipher the partially illegible Arabic-language passport stamps was not able to determine on what date Malik left the country, although her visa was valid for 60 days.

Meanwhile, Farook’s

passport stamps show that he entered Saudi Arabia on Oct. 1, 2013, and left sometime around Oct. 20. Goodlatte said that “would cast doubt” on whether they were in Saudi Arabia at the same time.

The stamps also do not prove that the pair spent time together during those trips. According to Goodlatte, an immigration official initially requested more evidence to show that the couple had previously met. However, he said, no additional materials were provided.

Malik and Farook died in a shootout with police Dec. 2 after they opened fire on Farook’s co-workers at an office holiday party.

Officials have been investigating the massacre as a terror attack. They have found private communications on social media that reflected a “joint commitment to jihad and to martyrdom,” FBI Director James Comey said Wednesday.

After the shooting in San Bernardino, but before she was killed by police, Malik put a post on Facebook indicating her loyalty to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, a leader of the Islamic State.

Goodlatte called immigration officials’ work on Malik’s application “unacceptable” and previously has said his committee is preparing to introduce a bill that would ramp up visa security.

“It is clear that immigration officials did not thoroughly vet her application,” Goodlatte said in a statement Friday.

“What is worse, the immigration official reviewing Malik’s application requested more evidence to ensure the two met in person, but it was never provided and her visa was approved anyway,” Goodlatte said.

The vetting was done by immigration officials at the Department of Homeland Security, which didn’t respond to requests for comment. Once the agency has approved the application, it is sent to the State Department to issue the visa.

The State Department defended its work and said Malik’s application was appropriately examined.

“All required procedures were followed in the K-1 visa case for Ms. Malik,” spokesman Elizabeth Kennedy Trudeau said in an interview. “There were no indications of any ill intent at the time that the visa was issued.”

But because of privacy laws and the ongoing FBI investigation into the massacre, she said, she could not comment on whether Farook and Malik actually met before Malik sought the visa. She said the State Department had shared all of its records on Malik with the FBI.

Law enforcement officials have uncovered at least two private messages that Malik, a Pakistani woman who grew up in Saudi Arabia, wrote online to a small group of Pakistani friends in 2012 and 2014, pledging her support for Islamic jihad and saying she hoped to join the fight one day. But those messages were shielded from public view by privacy settings, officials said.

Immigration officials don’t regularly check the social media accounts of visa applicants. For years, senior officials at the Department of Homeland Security debated whether doing so would be too intrusive and violate principles of free speech and freedom of expression.

In the past several months, the department has begun testing ways to include social media reviews in the vetting process. But searching the digital footprints left by applicants online is not a standard procedure for approving admission to the U.S.

OBAMA VISITS FAMILIES

President Barack Obama met Friday night with family members of those killed in the San Bernardino attack.

He said he was moved by their conversations and inspired by the families’ determination that something positive come from the tragedy.

“You had people from every background, every faith. Some described their loved ones who had come to this country as immigrants, others who had lived in the area all of their lives,” Obama told reporters after meeting with the families in a library at Indian Springs High School. He said their diversity is “so representative of this country.”

“As difficult as this time is for them and for the entire community,” he added, “they’re also representative of the strength and the unity and the love that exists in this community and in this country.”

For about three hours, Obama and his wife, Michelle, moved around the library talking with relatives of each of the 14 people killed. They also met with emergency responders.

The Obamas had stopped in San Bernardino on their way to a two-week vacation in Hawaii with their daughters.

“Even as we are vigilant about preventing terrorist attacks from happening, even as we insist that we can’t accept the notion of mass shootings in public places and places of work and worship, we have to remind ourselves of the overwhelming good that exists out there,” Obama said.

The families, he added, “could not have been more inspiring and more proud of their loved ones.”

It was the latest in what has become a grim custom for Obama: visiting a grieving community after a mass shooting and delivering a public statement seeking to make sense of the tragedy.

Mandy Pifer, whose boyfriend was killed in the attack, said of the meeting: “It just felt like they were really present in their conversation with me. They are sick and tired of doing these things, meeting our families.”

The president has sounded familiar themes about the importance of gun control but also speaking about Americans’ fears about the threat of homegrown terrorism.

The president has often expressed frustration in the wake of mass shootings about his inability to persuade Congress to enact stricter gun-control laws. The third anniversary of the Newtown, Conn., school massacre was last week. This October, Obama visited Roseburg, Ore., where he met with the families of victims of a shooting at a community college.

“My brother will never get his daughter back,” said George Velasco, whose niece, Yvette Velasco, 27, was killed in the San Bernardino attack. “But at least we know they are taking it very seriously.”

When Obama approached members of the Velasco family, he told them he knew that nothing he could say would ever truly comfort them but that he was sincerely sorry for their loss, Velasco said. The family showed the president a picture of Yvette Velasco on a cellphone, and her father told Obama how proud he had been of her work as an inspector with the county Department of Environmental Health.

Obama told them that as parents, he and his wife could not “imagine a loss like ours.”

The meetings largely focused on grief, but a few also touched on gun violence and efforts to ban military-style assault weapons. Farook and Malik were armed with two assault rifles and two pistols, investigators have said.

Karen Fagan, whose ex-husband Harry Bowman, 46, was killed, said they also spoke about ending hateful rhetoric and bigotry.

“Our hope is that good can arise from the ashes of this tragedy, but that can only happen if we resist the temptation to give into fear and hate,” Fagan said in a statement after the meeting.

Pifer sat at one of the last tables Obama and his wife visited. While she waited, she wrote out a sign containing her boyfriend Shannon Johnson’s final words. Johnson’s colleague, Denise Peraza, who survived the attack, said Johnson huddled with her under a table that morning as bullets flew across the room.