On July 4, 2002, an Egyptian national named Hesham Mohamed Hadayet walked into Los Angeles International Airport, approached the ticket counter of El Al, Israel’s national airline, and opened fire, killing two people and injuring four others in an effort to influence U.S. policy in favor of the Palestinian cause. He was in the U.S. on a Diversity Visa.

A decade earlier, he had applied for political asylum in the U.S. after entering the country on a tourist visa. During his hearing with immigration officials, he said he had been arrested in Egypt and accused of being a member of Al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya, a terrorist organization. He told authorities the accusation was false, but admitted on his application to being a member of the Assad Eben Furat Mosque association, an organization whose purpose was to “understand truly and apply Islamic law in the 20th century under any circumstances.” His asylum application was denied, but in 1997, he and his wife were granted green cards.

In 2017, Sayfullo Saipov, an Uzbek national who was granted permanent residency in 2010, drove a truck at high speed down a bike path along the Hudson River in New York city, running over bicyclists and murdering eight people in an ISIS-affiliated attack.