San Bernardino rep: Trump ‘continues to try to exploit my community’

The Democratic lawmaker representing San Bernardino, Calif., said Friday that President Trump’s immigration ban would not have stopped the deadly 2015 attack in his district and accused the president of trying to “exploit” the tragedy for political purposes.

“Nothing that the president proposed would have stopped the San Bernardino attack,” Rep. Pete Aguilar said on CNN’s “New Day.” “And it’s unfortunate that he continues to try to exploit my community by trying to say that.”

Trump has pointed to the shootings in San Bernardino as an example of Islamist extremists committing acts of terror in the U.S., using it to help justify an executive order stopping citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the U.S.

{mosads}But Aguilar pointed out that neither of the two attackers in the San Bernardino incident were from the countries included in Trump’s order. One was a U.S. citizen and the other was Pakistani.

“That was not targeted in the president’s ban,” Aguilar said. “So, this would have had zero effect.”

The 2015 attack was carried out by married couple Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik; it left 14 dead and another 22 wounded. Farook and Malik were later killed in a shootout with police.

Trump’s Jan. 27 executive order put a hold on people from seven predominantly Muslim countries — Syria, Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Libya, Sudan and Somalia — from traveling to the U.S. It also temporarily suspended the country’s refugee resettlement program.

The president has argued that the move is necessary to prevent potential terrorists from entering the U.S. But critics say it amounts to a de facto Muslim ban and stands at odds with the United States’s history as a country of immigrants.

A federal judge in Seattle blocked the order last week, and a San Francisco-based appeals court on Thursday rejected Trump’s attempt to get the block lifted. The administration is expected to appeal the decision.