United States looking at ways to better screen would-be immigrants

“During that time period immigration officials were not allowed to use or view social media as part of the screening process”, John Cohen, a former under-secretary at DHS for intelligence and analysis, told ABC News, where he now works as a national security consultant.

According to the law enforcement officials, because Malik used a pseudonym and privacy controls, her postings would not have been found even if USA authorities had reviewed social media as part of her visa application process.

Cohen said officials from United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) both pressed for a change in policy.

Two U.S. officials said that Malik’s pre-visa jihadist messages were missed because she’d sent them privately to her sister’s Facebook page and were not posted publicly.

She reportedly passed three U.S. background checks as she immigrated from Pakistan.

Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) demanded Sunday that the US immediately start a program to review social media sites of those admitted on visas.

The revelation is prompting at least one powerful Democratic senator to call for DHS to begin checking visa applicants’ social media accounts.

The new protocols are being considered following the December 2 attack in San Bernardino, California, in which a radicalized Muslim couple gunned down 14 people at a holiday office party.

Watch above, via ABC News.

There are programmes being tested that would allow officials to screen social media, however they are not widely employed.

“At best it was a hunch that something was in there”, one official said, adding that a tipster had recalled seeing a couple by the lake on the day of the shootings.

All these background checks came clear, with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, or FBI, saying that it didn’t recover any incriminating information against Malik, while the DHS and State Department said they followed all policies and procedures, the New York Times reported.

Johnson chose to keep the prohibition in place in early 2014 because he feared a civil liberties backlash and “bad public relations”, according to ABC.

Authorities have said Malik and Farook exchanged messages about jihad and martyrdom online before they were married and while she was living in Pakistan.

And background checks did not reveal this before a visa and green card were issued to her. No matter how thorough the checks would have been, they would not have anyway as immigration checks do not usually extend to social media.

Pressing criminal charges against him would cut off “any opportunity to let him lead investigators to any other persons or to an organization with whom he may be or may have been in contact with in the furtherance of the San Bernardino attack or other planned terrorist attacks”, one official said.