One of the brothers suspected of carrying out the terrorist attack on the Boston Marathon faced deportation in 2009 after being convicted of a domestic violence charge but was allowed to stay, according to a government watchdog.

“Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the 26-year-old killed in a wild shootout with police, was a legal U.S. resident who never the less could have been removed from the country after a 2009 domestic violence conviction,” Judicial Watch reports based on an unnamed source.