Florida Activists Push Broward County Sheriff to Fire Muslim Deputy for Allegedly Supporting Terror
BERMAN: There is news about San Bernardino tonight and controversy surrounding how the female terrorist got her visa application past homeland security. For the first time, we are getting a look at what Syed Rizwan Farook, the other terrorist and a U.S. citizen provided to prove the couple met in person and were planning to marry. Together, they killed 14 people on a deadliest terror attack in the U.S. since September 11th. House Republican relive the applications say the evidence was not good enough to quality for a fiance visa. Homeland security officials say it met legal - homeland security officials, I should say, do say it met legal requirements. Kyung Lah joins us with more. Kyung, this is our first look of the visa application. What does it reveal?</s>KYUNG LAH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It is a 21-page application. It is the application that Tashfeen Malik applied to enter to the United States on that fiance visa. And one thing that really caught our eyes was one of the last things filed, one of the last pages on that application is something that Syed Rizwan Farook wrote himself. You got to hear from him in his own words. He writes in something called intention to marry statement. Quoting from that quote "my fiance and I met through an online Web site. After several weeks of emailing we decided to meet each other." He continues to talk about how they met in Saudi Arabia. And then writes, my fiance and I intend to marry within the first month of her arriving in the United States. Now, this is application, a document that was released by the House committee looking into alleged shortfalls. They point to one particular page. It is the page that shows the visa into Saudi Arabia by Tashfeen Malik. It is her visa into Saudi Arabia. And they point out that some of these dates - it's very, very difficult to read, but these dates were not -- the passport stamps were not accurately translated and when they were, the dates didn't prove that they actually met in person. So, the committee saying that all of this continues to raise questions about whether or not this entire process is problematic, John.</s>BERMAN: As you say, there is so much scrutiny right now over this process. Particularly the fiancee visa application process. Is it clear whether there was an actual mistake made here?</s>LAH: Well, homeland security says no. And they released a one-page document basically rebutting the entire contention by the committee. They released a statement. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services releasing this statement, saying that Tashfeen Malik was subjected to numerous background checks at all stages that the agency handled her case. And those background checks did not reveal any derogatory information about Malik. They're underscoring that there were no red flags, that the communication that happened between this couple was in private. It did not happen on social media. And security experts, John, do say that when you have this sort of setup, it is very difficult to catch them.</s>BERMAN: All right. Kyung Lah, thank you so much. The San Bernardino and Paris terror attacks have many Americans on edge. Maybe too on edge. A Muslim couple and their son, they were escorted out of the mall in Fort Smith, Arkansas over the weekend after they supposedly shot video of store entrances. Alan and Daphne Crawford say, they were just shopping. He added that he served in the U.S. military and is thinking he's moving - and thinking now of moving his family out of the area. Another example of Muslims under scrutiny, this one is from South Florida's Broward County. Local activists have, for months, pushed the sheriff to fire one of his deputies. He's a Muslim. The activists say he has connections to an organization that they say supports terror. They even call him Deputy Hamas. The sheriff's department said he is a loyal American and a crusader against extremism. Randi Kaye has the story.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What I do want to do, is get my questions answered. And when CAIR inserts itself ...</s>JOYCE KAUFMAN, HOST, "THE JOYCE KAUFMAN SHOW": I know that not every Muslim is a jihadist. But all the jihadists seem to be Muslims.</s>RANDI KAYE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Joyce Kaufman has been on talk radio in south Florida for more than 20 years. A hot topic these days is a man named Nezar Hamze, he's the regional director of CAIR, the Council on American Islamic Relations. He's also a sheriff's deputy of Broward County.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Anybody in this country is afraid to have a conversation about Islam ...</s>KAYE: Kaufman says Deputy Hamze wasn't properly vetted given his convection to CAIR. And one seemed gone from the police department.</s>KAUFMAN: I've been called everything from racist, moron to Islamophobe, to one trick pony. And, you know, I refuse to bow down.</s>KAYE (voice over): Are you an Islamophob?</s>KAUFMAN: No, not at all.</s>KAYE (voice over): Neither Hamze nor the sheriff would speak with us, but a spokesperson for the Broward County Sheriff's Department told me Hamze has been with the department since 2011, a full-time deputy since 2014. The department considers him an excellent deputy and a loyal American. Hamze travels the state, speaking out against extremism and trains Muslims in mosques how to escape an active shooter. Still, Kaufman wants him investigated and she's not alone. Activist David Rosenthal (ph) calls Deputy Hamze Deputy Hamas.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I hate Islam. Islam is evil.</s>KAYE: Rosenthal even held a rally protesting Hamze, but CAIR Florida's lawyer says critics have it all wrong.</s>WILFREDO RUIZ, CAR FLORIDA LEGAL COUNSEL: Whenever we're in an electoral year, there's a spike of this Islamophobic rhetoric. When we hear people like Trump it's definitely hate speech.</s>KAYE: Kaufman supports Donald Trump's idea to surveil mosques and ban some Muslims. (on camera): Do you think you're contributing to the fear when you bring it up on the air?</s>KAUFMAN: I think the fear is there. I don't think I do anything to stoke it. I don't have to. It's there.</s>KAYE (voice over): The fact is, and Kaufman knows the numbers, only a very small fraction of the world's 1.6 billion Muslims endorse the violence of terror groups like ISIS and al Qaeda. Still, she wonders if Hamze would take action. (on camera): As a sheriff's deputy his job is to uphold the law. And it sounds like you're concerned that maybe he would turn the other way if he heard some radical conversations taking place in a mosque. Right? Am I hearing you correctly?</s>KAUFMAN: That is correct. I don't know. I mean I can't say that that's a fact. But I can't say it's not a fact.</s>BERMAN: Randi is here with us now. Randi, what does Joyce Kaufman mean when she says she wants the deputy vetted? What does vetted mean here?</s>KAYE: She wants to be sure and she wants to see proof that he was cleared by the FBI, that he got FBI clearance, and I asked the lawyer for CAIR about this. And he said that Deputy Hamze was vigorously vetted, that he was cleared by the FBI. And from what I am told, this is normal procedure for law enforcement. They get looked at very closely by local, state and federal agencies, but Joyce Kaufman and others still have questions. You saw that video of the deputy where he was training people how to escape an active shooter in that mosque. His critics are suggesting he was actually there giving weapons training, how to kill others, how to shoot others. If you look at that video closely, he's using toy guns. They're fake guns, plastic guns. If you listen to that local media report, he's actually telling them how to charge the shooter, how to get out of the building. But his critics still suggest you know what, there's something not right with this guy.</s>BERMAN: Randi Kaye, thank you so much. Up next, the latest on the woman accused of mowing down pedestrians in Las Vegas. How she went from being an against-all-odds success story to homeless and charged with murder.