The suspect in the Colorado firebomb attack, Mohamed Sabry Soliman, "should not have been in our country to begin with," Rep. Brandon Gill, R-Texas, told Newsmax on Monday.
Soliman, 45, was booked on Monday into the Boulder County jail north of Denver and charged with a federal hate crime. Police say he threw a makeshift flamethrower into a group that had assembled to raise attention to Israelis held hostage in the Gaza Strip.
"We've seen a rise of antisemitism in this country. We've seen college protests where you have students shouting, 'From the river to the sea. Palestine will be free.' You've seen college campuses have done virtually nothing to stop it until we force them to," Gill said on "Newsline."
"You've seen this movement get worse and worse and worse in the United States. And now it is starting to spill into violence. You saw the attack yesterday. We saw two Israeli diplomats murdered in Washington, D.C., just about a week and a half ago. This is a serious problem in the United States.
"Our constitutional republic depends on the ability of the American people to speak openly and to debate ideas and to have differing opinions on things without anybody resorting to political or religious violence. That is so antithetical to the way our country runs.
"But let me tell you, the problem that I have here is that this man, Mohamed Soliman, should not have been in our country to begin with. He shouldn't have been let in under a B1/B2 visa initially. Legally, he shouldn't have been allowed to stay in after he overstayed it. And now we're seeing the results of that," he said.
The FBI is investigating the attack as a terrorist act.
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Solange Reyner ✉
Solange Reyner is a writer and editor for Newsmax. She has more than 15 years in the journalism industry reporting and covering news, sports and politics.
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