President-elect Donald Trump is flying to Columbus, Ohio on Thursday to meet with several victims of last month's car-and-knife attack at Ohio State University that left 11 people hospitalized.
The president-elect tweeted soon after the attack that perpetrator Abdul Razak Ali Artan, an Ohio State student and legal Somali immigrant, should never have been let into the U.S. He reiterated the claim at a rally in Cincinnati last week, blaming lax immigration laws imposed by "stupid politicians" for the "violent atrocity" on the Ohio State campus, the Associated Press reported.
"We will do everything in our power to keep the scourge of terrorism out of our country," Trump told the crowd in Cincinnati. "People are pouring in from regions of the Middle East. We have no idea who they are, where they are, what they're thinking. And we're going to stop that dead cold flat. You just take a good look at what just happened in your state."
Artan arrived in the U.S. with his family in 2014 and was granted legal permanent residency. Authorities believe he had self-radicalized prior to carrying out the Nov. 28 attack, where he rammed his car into pedestrians and emerged to stab others with a knife prior to being shot dead by police. The Islamic State called Artan a "soldier" of the terrorist group in a statement released a day after the assault.
Trump is expected to meet with the victims and first-responders of the attack at 3 p.m.