READING, Mass. — Marathon bombing survivor Marc Fucarile said that he believes President Donald Trump’s immigration ban will prevent another attack in the U.S.
“Terrorism is a problem and something needs to be done if we can't find out who's coming into this country, it's going to be a Trojan horse and they're going to come in, along with all the other refugees,” said Fucarile.
He had a firsthand look at what terrorism looks like in April 2013. He was at the Boston Marathon finish line when the bombs went off.
"The second bomb was beside me and my friends. Three of us lost a leg that day, six of us critically injured," said Fucarile.
Along with banning immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries for 90 days, Trump’s executive order put a freeze on the refugee program for 120 days and banned any future refugees from Syria indefinitely.
"The president's job to protect the people of the United States of America and I feel that's what he's doing,” said Fucarile.
The marathon bombers Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev lived in Kyrgyzstan as children and then moved to Dagestan in the Russian Federation. As children, their family traveled to the U.S. on a travel visa and claimed asylum during their stay because of their father's ties to Chechnya, citing persecution. Dzhokhar became a naturalized U.S. citizen and Tamerlan's citizenship application was in progress.
Trump's ban doesn't target Muslims specifically; both Tsarnaevs were raised Muslim and later became radicalized.
"The religion part of it, for the extremists, they don't like us. If that's who needs to be targeted, that's who needs to be targeted. They don't like our ways, they don't agree with us, and they think it’s okay to kill us,” said Fucarile.
Fucarile lost his right leg in the bombing and has had to live with the reminder that terrorism exists every day since, and he thinks that other Americans need to remember that.
"I think people need to wake up and realize terrorism is a real thing," he said.
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