House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce said Thursday that San Bernardino shooter Tashfeen Malik's ability to get into the United States without being asked her jihadist tendencies in her 2014 visa interview was "an intelligence failure."
"It's one of the reasons that we'd like to make certain that the Visa waiver system has changed," the California Republican
told Erin Burnett on CNN. "ISIS is not a winning strategy here.
"It has to be defeated because they are recruiting from within these societies here now," he added, referring to social media and within extremists groups. "It will make it harder.
"We've got to reform our process in terms of those going through this visa program."
Malik, 29, entered the United States from Pakistan on a fiancée visa to marry her husband, Syed Farook, 28, in July 2014. Farook was born in Illinois.
Authorities say the couple was radicalized at least two years ago and had discussed jihad and martyrdom as early as 2013.
Malik was not asked about her extremist tendencies in her interview, authorities said. Malik has also been tied to radical Islamic schools in the Middle East — and both have been linked to Muslim extremists.
The couple killed 14 people and wounded 22 others in last week's shooting rampage at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino.
Royce, who backed legislation in the House on Tuesday that would tighten the vetting process, told Burnett that "we should ask questions in order to try to identify whether they are religious extremists.
That, he added, would include "a survey of trying to figure out if they have a radical ideology and trying to access information on the Internet that would show their position, as well as where they have graduated from."
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