United States President Donald Trump on Wednesday said that he will ask the Congress to end an immigrant visa program, through which the New York City terror suspect entered the country.
"I am today starting the process of terminating the diversary lottery program. I'm going to ask Congress to immediately initiate work to get rid of this program. Diversary and diversity lottery. Diversity lottery," said the U.S. President speaking during a Cabinet meeting at White House.
"Sounds nice. It's not nice. It's not good. It hasn't been good. We've been against it. So we want to immediately work with Congress on the Diversity Lottery Program, on terminating it, getting rid of it," he added.
Trump called the suspect an "animal" and said that he should have not been allowed into the country.
"My administration is coordinating closely between federal and local officials to investigate the attack and to further investigate this animal who did the attacking," Trump said.
On Tuesday,the 29-year-old terror suspect, Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov, who deliberately drove into bicyclists and pedestrians on a bike path in Lower Manhattan on Tuesday, killing at least eight people and injuring many, left a note behind in the rental truck, pledging his allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syriac (ISIS).
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Hours after the attack, the U.S. President Donald Trump said that the United States must not let the ISIS "return to or enter" the country.
Officials said it was the deadliest terrorist attack in New York City since 9/11.
Saipov came to the U.S. from Uzbekistan.
According to the media reports, Saipov may have gained entry through the diversity visa program.
However, the federal government had not confirmed that is the case before Trump's remarks.
Afterwards, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security released a statement saying he did use the lottery to enter the U.S. in 2010.
The visa program allows the U.S. State Department to issue as many as 50,000 visas per year to people from countries that have low rates of immigration to the U.S.
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