Roy moore accused of Sexual Misconduct and rolled up on a horse to cast his vote. Hes railed against gays and twice been forced from office, but dont say the moores arent fond of jews. His wife says one of their lawyers is a jew. As for roy moores opponent, doug jones is looking for alabama voters to send democrat to the senate for the first time in 25 years. Today alabamians have their voice. Lets get to it. A live look coming at the White House Briefing room. Sarah sanders set to take questions from reporters right now. That should be interesting. As voters head to the polls down south in alabama, the special u. S. Senate election is underway. The president has doubled down on his support for roy moore. The republican candidate faces accusations of Sexual Misconduct of teenagers when he was in his 30s. He denies it. The president says people in alabama need to vote for Robert Mueller because his democratic challenger doug jones will help the trump agenda. This morning roy moore showed up to vote on his horse, sassy. He says its a Family Tradition and maybe a superstition. The republican candidate rode that same horse before the voting in the august primary, which he won. Despite the president s endorsement of roy moore, some Republican Leaders called for him to quit the race. Today moore talked about facing a possible Senate Ethics investigation. Judge moore, if you win, are you prepared to face an Ethics Committee investigation . Well take those problems up when we get to the senate. Shepard doug jones says roy moore is getting ahead of himself. I dont think roy moore will win this election. Analysts say the key for doug jones is getting out the vote. Specifically educated women, African Americans and suburban moderate republicans. If theres a rode to the United States senate for a pro choice democrat from alabama, those voters may well pave the way. John roberts is live in the Briefing Room where were waiting. Hello, john. Good afternoon, shep. One of the Big Questions running around washington, if roy moore does prevail and win the election tonight, what happens to him then . Its a question weve been wanting to ask the president , would he support roy moore being seated in the senate. We just got the twominute warning but the president has not answered any questions since he endorsed him last week. At every public appearance, the president just walks away or refuses to take questions. Hes taken one questions since he endorsed roy moore at a Cabinet Meeting last week. The question was about whether or not there would be a government shut down. The president certainly has been active on social media talking about roy moore saying this morning the people of alabama will do the right thing. Doug jones is pro abortion, weak on crime, military and ilLegal Immigration. Back for gun owners and veterans. Jones a pelosischumer puppet. Roy moore always vote with us. Vote roy moore. I dont expect well hear from the president other than a social Media Statement until after the election. Ill lay a dollar to say thats when he will start taking questions again. Shepard big spender. Were waiting to hear from the white house after more than 50 democratic congresswoman have called for the House Oversight committee to investigation accusations of Sexual Misconduct against the president. President trump is calling the accusations fake news. He blasted senator Kirsten Gillibrand. She called on the president to step down over the accusations. The president tweeted light wait senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a flunky for senator schumer and someone that would come to my office begging for Campaign Contributions and would do anything for them is now in the ring fighting against trump. Very disloyal to bill and crooked. Used bill and crooked, president and mrs. Clinton. Gillibrand says that bill clinton should have resigned during the lewinsky candle. Its the line from President Trump saying she would do anything for Campaign Contributions has her responding. I see it as a sexist smear. Thats what it is. Its part of the president s effort of namecalling and its not going to silence me. Its intended to silence me. Its not going to silence the women that have stood up against him and its not going to silence the millions out there every day since his inauguration. Senator gillibrand says the accusations against the president are credible. Moments ago, a reporter asked Mitch Mcconnell about calls for an investigation into the president. Should Congress InvestigateSexual Assault allegations against President Trump . What were in charge of here is the senate. The Ethics Committee upon referral, if it determines it should, takes a look at senatorial conduct. Thats what were dealing with here. Process. John roberts, this has heated up very quickly and democrats on the hill seem very motivated. It started to heat up yesterday, shep, when the four women came out and reaired their accusations. It take it to a new level when senator gillibrand said she should step down. You saw the tweet from the president. The president tweeting despite thousands of hours wasted and many millions of dollars spent, the democrats have been unable to show any collusion with russian so now other moving to false accusations from woman that i dont know and never met. Fake news. Were not sure how narrowly the president is targeting that tweet. Some of the women that made accusations are some people he knows from the past. Its interesting to see how senator warren leapt to the defense of senator gillibrand. Do you know who your picking a fight with that . Good luck at real donald trump. In all of my years in covering the white house, i never heard a senator use the word slut shame publicly. Thats where we are with the level of Public Discourse these days. It trickles out of here. Well see where this goes. Shepard were expecting questions on those two matters, the senate race in alabama and this bigger sort of what is up with the president questions from the democrats. You wonder if that is not territory they try to choose to avoid. Lets see. Sarah is about to come out. I keep looking over my shoulder. We got a soft twominute washing, this could go a number of directions. We didnt know what direction it was going to go yesterday when it erupted into a fight between Sarah Huckabee sanders and a couple of my colleagues. Well see where the line is. Its always interesting to watch the very directions that this goes in. Shepard i know we have a wide shot. I heard them laughing at you. Tell your friends hello. I will. Shep sells hello. Shepard look at that. Its tv magic. Good afternoon. Let me start by introducing the district or the of the United States citizenship and immigrant services. Hes here to provide a briefing on the attempted suicide bombing in new york and how its enabled by flaws in our immigration system. After that, ill have questions. If you can as always stay focused on the topic at hand, that would be great. Thanks so much. Hello. Here to talk to you about yesterdays incident and kind of give you some context and perspective in the immigration system, how it works or didnt work in this case. And what are the source of things that our administration is proposing to change to make it better. As you all know, yesterday the suspect, akayed ullah was arrested in an attempted bombing in new york city. Theres an immigration aspect to this. Immigration aspect is that he immigrated to this country, a green card holder, lawful permanent resident. He came to this country based on a Family Connection to a u. S. Citizen. He was a national bangladesh. The u. S. Citizen in question was his uncle. That u. S. Citizen many years ago came to this country originally as a visa lottery winner. So this is the general back grouped. I now want to explain what that means, where those terms come from what the significance of that is. First, i would explain that for those that arent aware, our immigration system has two principle components. Theres a familybased component through which the suspect in yesterdays attack alleged bombing incident came through and theres an employmentbased component. In any given year, we have about one million immigrants. One Million People come here get green cards, immigrant visas. In fiscal year 15, for example, of that one million, about 72 of our immigrants came based on a Family Connection. Only 6 , one out of 15 came based on unemployment or job connection. The immigration system is hely weighted towards family migration. There are other categories of people that immigrate as well, besides Family Employment based, refugees, the lottery program, but those are smaller. I want to talk now about these in particular. The familybased employmentbased and the visa based lottery. The familybased, theres multiple categories of people. The principle category are called immediate relatives. These are people that are the spouses or children, family members of u. S. Citizens. In a given years, you have about half a Million People in that category. In fact, better numbers than that. In fiscal year 16, these are people that are the Nuclear Family members of citizens. 566,000 people that entered. An additional category, in the familybased universe, these are preference based categories. These are more extended family members. These include unmarried sons and daughters of u. S. Citizens. Second category, spouses of green card holders. Another category is brothers and sisters of u. S. Citizens and their children. Thats the category that yesterdays suspect came in under. The suspect in yesterdays bombing came in under the most extreme remote possible familybased connection that you can have under current u. S. Immigration law. That being the child of the sibling of a u. S. Citizen. Under the employmentbased categories, that is a much smaller number. Only 140,000 slots are allocated in that category. But you get half that number of workers because the spouses and children count towards that cap. You have the number for extraordinary ability workers, people with advanced degrees, skilled professionals and immigrant investors. Multiple categories. A smaller number than the familybased categories. I remind you, 1 out of 15 of immigrants come in under those skilled categories. Let me turn to the diversity visa, the other visa program that is relevant to yesterdays events. The diversity visa or visa lottery as its called is a program that was established back in 1990. There was some precursor programs before that. Basically the program as we know it established in 1990, that lets in about 50,000 people a year based on immigration lottery. The qualifications for registers for the lottery are that you have to be from a country that had low immigration in previous five years and the person who is applying for the lottery has to either have a High School Degree or if they have no education, at least two years of experience in a job that requires two years of training. So the criteria are very low. The problems with the visa lottery are various. First, because the criteria are so low, you have no education at all and very little skills or you have a minimum of education and no skills at all. And if its a lottery, anybody on the planet who is from a qualifying country can take advantage of this. The state department in 2003, the state Department InspectorGeneral Office observed that this low Eligibility Criteria can lead to exploitation by terrorists. They warned about this in 2003. The gae echoed that same warning. Warning that terrorists could take advantage of the Diversity Program. Also the program is racked with fraud. In 2003, the state department ig 15 years ago noted the program was racked with fraud. The fraud, the lower level eligibility standards is exploited by terrorists and other actors. Bangladesh is an interesting case. Thats the country where the suspect came from yesterday. That country was a high user of the visa lottery program. In 2007, which was the peak year for that countrys use of the visa lottery, 27 of the immigrants of that country came through that program. Uzbekistan, which is the country of origin of the alleged the truck driver from october 31 in new york city, in 2010, 70 of immigrants from uzbekistan came from the visa lottery program. Finally, lets me touch on chain migration. What when i use that word, what im talking about is a person that comes to this country and who in turn employs one of these many avenues i described to sponsor relatives in the home country to joan him or her. Because the categories that i described in familybased migration is so extensive, its not just Nuclear Family. You have adult unmarried children, nieces and nephews. You can sponsor a person like yesterdays alleged terrorist at the extremity of that chain and that person in turn can sponsor people indefinitely. Hundreds of thousands of people come into this country every year based on the extended family migration categories. And it is my view, our administrations view that that is not the way that we should be running our immigration system. A system like that that includes Something Like the diversity user program, the extended families are not the way anybody would design this season if we started from scratch. We need an immigration system that is selective. Select the people that come on criteria that ensure success in our country. Random lot reese, extended Family Connections is not the way to run an immigration system. I appeal, we appeal to continue to consider these matters in the coming weeks, to seriously take into account these concerns that we have with the way the immigration system is structured and its vulnerabilities and correct that. At that point, my formal comments are concluded. Ill answer any questions you have. Quick question. Thanks, mr. Cissna. I want to ask a question about what youre suggesting. Is it your belief that the only changes that can be done to the immigration system are ones that emanate from congress . Are there things that the president can do by executive action to change the process for either chain migration or the visa lottery . Well, thats something that were looking at right now in uscis, my agency that administers these visa programs. There are some things that we could do. Theres some things that the president has directed us to do by executive order in particular with the temporary visa categories. Were talking about green cards. But yes, a lot of things we can do and were going to do to increase protections of american workers. In the green card domain, its harder. Congress has kind of occupied that field a little more densely than in the temporary visa area. There could be. There could be some things that we can do to clarify how these categories are administered. Yes. Sir . Theres so much talk about the daca legislation right now. Do you think any daca bill would have to be tied to bring in a meritbased system . Well, we about two months ago, the president announced his immigration priorities. You can independent if it on the white house website. A long list of a several dozen priorities that we, career officials at dhs and the other relevant immigration agencies came up with as the things that we need to be able to do our jobs. In that list, there are these fixes that im talking about, including getting rid of the visa lottery program, ending chain migration. These are things that we talked about. So we hope and expect congress will take the priorities seriously and will do as much as they can to accomplish the goals we set forward. [question inaudible] i cant speak for what the president wants. What i want is something that i can implement and i can implement well to get at the priorities that we need to do our job. Yes, sir. Would you be in favor of extending the blanket travel ban as far as the countries that are concerned . Such as bangladesh, which isnt on the list currently. My position on that is my agency needs as much information as it can get from the other countries to vet and ensure that bad people dont come in to the country. To the degree that that can be done through the executive order, im all for it. But i am not in a position to describe what the blanket ban, as you put it should or should not be extended. I want the information that we can get to screen people. How do you feel about people that have been here for years and become radicalized since theyre here . How would any of that deal with what happened in new york . Theres two points, i think. The criticisms that we have of the Diversity Visa Program and chain migration, in particular with the visa migration program, the vulnerability to exploitation by terrorists because of the low Eligibility Criteria and the prevalence of fraud that is not changing. Its a sad fact of that program. For that reason, regardless of when the person became radicalized, i just want that door shut. Its been recognized for 15 years. With respect to that particular in particular. My agency in particular and is focused very much so on ensuring that immigration doesnt stop when the person gets the green card. Its an ongoing process. I view it that way. I think that we have how so . What you want is an immigrant to become a citizen. We wa