State Department Principal Deputy Spokesperson Tommy Pigott on Wednesday defended the Trump administration's pause on immigration from 19 countries, telling Newsmax's "Wake Up America" that national security concerns demand "common-sense" action after the deadly attack on two West Virginia National Guardsmen.
Pigott said President Donald Trump moved immediately to strengthen border and visa controls in the wake of the attack that left one soldier dead and another fighting for his life.
"From the very beginning of this administration, President Trump has launched an all-of-government approach to secure our borders," he said, noting that border security encompasses much more than physical barriers to entry.
"Of course, we think of the Southwest border when we think of securing the border, and President Trump has secured the border there, but another important component of this is visas," Pigott said.
He emphasized the State Department's expanded vetting system, which consists of "new guidelines, a new vetting procedure, new qualifications or considerations for consular officers to consider [and] new criteria," and said the department has "the fundamental understanding that every one of these decisions is a national security decision."
The processes used to evaluate entry into the country are revisited continually, Pigott said, to ensure the safety of U.S. citizens.
"Every day we reexamine these processes to see ways that we can improve and make sure that we have people here in this country that aren't going to hurt Americans," he said. "That's a basic common-sense principle that we are going to uphold here at the State Department."
When pressed for a timeline on when the 19-country immigration pause might be lifted, Pigott declined to give specifics, deferring to the Department of Homeland Security.
"Ultimately, when it comes to some of these specifics, I'll defer to DHS on their timeline, but, from the State Department's perspective, I can say a lot of the actions that we've taken were implemented immediately," he said. "I'm not going to preview exactly when that pause will end, but I think the American people expect when we have a terrorist attack, like we saw against the National Guard, that we need to figure out what happened and we need to make sure it never happens again."
Pigott added that the administration has worked on these measures since Day One of Trump's second term.
He closed by contrasting the administration's approach with that of its Democrat predecessor.
"Fundamentally, we saw an abuse of our immigration laws under the previous administration," Pigott said. "The abuse of our immigration laws is coming to an end under this administration and that is an important part of protecting the American people."
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