The GOP's immigration bumper sticker has been four words for thirty years: legal good, illegal bad.
Two naturalized U.S. citizens carried out back-to-back terrorist attacks on American soil – and both came here legally.
Now one senator is finally saying what the old Republican establishment never would.
Mohamed Jalloh and Ayman Ghazali Both Came Here Legally
Lt. Col. Brandon Shah spent his career serving this country. He flew helicopters over Iraq and Afghanistan, earned two Bronze Stars, and came home to Old Dominion University to shape the next generation of Army officers.
Thursday morning, Mohamed Bailor Jalloh – a naturalized citizen from Sierra Leone – walked into Shah's ROTC class, shouted "Allahu Akbar," and shot him dead.
Jalloh didn't sneak across the border. He arrived legally, enlisted in the Virginia National Guard, then pleaded guilty in 2016 to attempting to provide material support to ISIS. A judge sentenced him to 11 years. The Biden administration cut him loose in December 2024 – roughly two and a half years before his sentence ended – after he completed a drug treatment program.
He re-enrolled at ODU six months later. FBI Director Kash Patel confirmed the attack as an act of terrorism.
Hours later in Michigan, Ayman Mohamad Ghazali loaded an explosives-laden truck and drove it through the front doors of Temple Israel synagogue in West Bloomfield. A preschool with 140 children was inside.
Security guards killed him before he could finish the job. Ghazali had been living in Dearborn Heights for fifteen years – he came here in 2011 as the spouse of a U.S. citizen and collected his American citizenship in 2016, courtesy of the Obama administration.
Two attacks. One day. Zero illegal border crossings.
Schmitt Calls for Legal Immigration Reform and Denaturalization on Ingraham
That same night, Missouri Senator Eric Schmitt went on The Ingraham Angle and said something that would have gotten a Republican scolded during the 2012 primary.
"A lot of these people have come in legally," Schmitt told Laura Ingraham. "A lot of American workers have been displaced by foreign workers. A lot of American students have been displaced by these visa mills at universities and tax breaks that companies get after the fact."
Schmitt didn't stop there. He called out the Democrat-led DHS shutdown – which left Homeland Security defunded even as jihadists were attacking Americans on two coasts – and demanded passage of the SCAM Act, his legislation to denaturalize and deport citizens who obtained citizenship fraudulently or later commit terrorism.
"We need to reform our legal immigration system," Schmitt said flatly.
That's a sentence the old GOP establishment – the Ted Cruz "legal good, illegal bad" wing – still can't bring itself to say out loud. Cruz posted that bumper sticker on X this year and his own followers shredded him for it.
Democrats Voted No While the Attacks Were Happening
Michigan Senators Elissa Slotkin and Gary Peters voted against funding DHS on Thursday – minutes after Ghazali drove his truck into that synagogue.
Forty-six of 47 Senate Democrats voted to keep Homeland Security closed. Four jihadist attacks on American soil in two weeks, and the Democrat caucus voted to keep the agency charged with stopping them in the dark.
Senator Brian Schatz of Hawaii told reporters his caucus was "very serene" about the shutdown.
Brandon Shah's family is not serene.
The 140 children who spent the afternoon sheltering in place while a truck burned through their synagogue are not serene.
Democrats engineered this outcome – a legal immigration system with no serious vetting, no denaturalization process for terrorists, and no functioning homeland security agency to catch what falls through the cracks.
Schmitt has it exactly right. Closing the border was the first step. Fixing the legal system is the next one.
Sources:
- Dominique Evans, FBI Norfolk Field Office Press Conference, March 12, 2026.
- "ODU Shooting: Old Dominion Attack Suspect Identified as Mohamed Bailor Jalloh," Fox News, March 12, 2026.
- "Who Is Ayman Mohamad Ghazali? Lebanese-Born American Accused in Jewish Synagogue Attack," Fox News, March 13, 2026.
- "Schmitt Reups Push for Expanding Denaturalization After Recent Acts of Violence by Naturalized Citizens," Fox News, March 13, 2026.
- "Sen. Schmitt Blasts Democrats for Defunding DHS Amid Heightened Terror Threats," Senator Schmitt Press Release, March 2026.
- Amy Curtis, "All It Took for Democrats to Cave on DHS Funding Was Four Terrorist Attacks," Townhall, March 13, 2026.