Federal officials who reviewed San Bernardino shooter Tashfeen Malik’s immigration file failed to follow a requirement that couples seeking a visa to marry prove they have met in person, a congressional committee found.
“It is clear that immigration officials did not thoroughly vet her application,” Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said in a release Saturday detailing results of a reivew of Malik’s file.
Malik, 29, and her husband Syed Farook, 28, killed 14 people in San Bernardino, Calif, on Dec. 2, in an attack the FBI is investigating as terrorism. They later died in a shootout with police.
Malik, a Pakistani citizen, received a so-called financee visa to marry Farook, a U.S. citizen. She entered the United States in July 2014.
But Goodlatte says the couple’s file contains no evidence they met in person. The file includes passport stamps in Arabic that purport to show they were in Saudi Arabia at the same time. But the stamps were never translated into English, despite an immigration official’s request for a translation, the panel found.
The committee had the stamps translated. They show Malik entered Saudi Arabia on about June 4, 2013, but her exit stamp is illegible, Goodlatte says. Farook’s passport shows a Saudi Arabian entry stamp of Oct. 1, 2013. The exit stamp was approximately Oct. 20, 2013.
Goodlatte noted Malik’s Saudi Arabian visa was good for only 60 days, suggesting she was not there to meet Farook in October. Even if she was present, there remains no evidence the two met, the congressman says.
The immigration official reviewing Malik’s application requested more evidence that she and Farook met in person. But officials approved the application without received any more information, according to Goodlatte.
“Visa security is critical to national security, and it’s unacceptable that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services did not fully vet Malik’s application and instead sloppily approved her visa,” the congressman said.
Goodlatte says he will offer a bill tightening visa security processing, including K-1 visas. His bill will require that social media posts is reviewed as part of visa applicants’ background checks. The measure would also require in-person interviews of the visa applicant and an American sponsor.
