President Donald Trump moved fast to gain political benefit in the fury of the New York terrorist attack. Immediately he cast blame on Democrats for slipshod immigration laws and calling the American criminal justice system “a joke.”
Not even 24 hours after an Uzbek immigrant murdered eight people on a Manhattan bike path in which authorities opined that it was inspired by the Islamic State, Trump grabbed on the horrific crime to repeat his calls for a series of hard line policies. The president said he would try to abolish a well-liked “diversity lottery” for foreigners seeking U.S. visas, direct the State Department to increase “extreme vetting” of immigrants and advocated he would consider sending the suspect, Sayfullo Saipov, a legal permanent resident of the United States, to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
“We have to get much tougher,” Trump said. “We have to get much smarter. And we have to get much less politically correct. We’re so politically correct that we’re afraid to do anything.”
Trump campaigned on promises to get tougher on terrorism and immigration but his plan has been largely derailed in Congress and in the federal courts. Judges have impeded his many attempts to enact a all-encompassing travel ban on immigrants from a minority of countries,. Interesting Uzbekistan was not one of them.