The New York City terror bombing suspect entered the United States in 2011 under the "most extremely remote possible family based connection that you can have under current U.S. immigration law," a top Trump administration immigration official said Tuesday.
"That being the child of the sibling of a U.S. citizen," Francis Cissna, director of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, told reporters at the daily White House briefing.
The suspect, Akayed Ullah, 27, who tried to detonate a pipe bomb strapped to his body in the Times Square subway system Monday, came from Bangladesh on a visa for the children of siblings of American citizens, Cissna said.
Ullah, who allegedly taunted President Donald Trump on social media before the attack, was arrested and now faces federal terrorism charges.
Trump on Tuesday called for scrapping the visa lottery program and "chain migration" in light of the attack, which injured Ullah and five others.
"We're gonna end both of them," Trump told reporters at the White House. "We're going to end 'em. Fast.
"Congress must get involved immediately, and they are involved immediately — and I can tell you we have tremendous support."
Cissna said the lottery program was "racked with fraud," noting the State Department during the Obama administration warned in 2003 the program was especially vulnerable to abuse by possible terrorists.
"The criteria are so low," he said, adding "either you have no education at all, and very little skills, or you have a minimum of education and no skills at all.
"Because it's a lottery, pretty much anybody on the planet who is from qualifying country can take advantage of this.
"The fraud and the low eligibility standards, all this contribute to potential exploitation by terrorists," he said.
"What we need is an immigration system that is selective," Cissna added. "We want to select the types of people coming here based on criteria that ensure the success and the ability to assimilate successfully in our country.
"Random lotteries, extended family connections — that's not the way to run our immigration system."
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