Just before the shooting rampage, the gunman Robert Bowers wrote on a far-right social media site, ”HIAS likes to bring invaders in that kill our people. I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics, I’m going in.” HIAS refers to the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, a humanitarian aid nonprofit group that has provided assistance to refugees for more than 130 years. Just last month, HIAS condemned President Trump for capping the number of refugees allowed into the U.S. this year at just 30,000, writing, “President Trump has once again betrayed America’s history and global leadership in providing safe haven for innocent human beings fleeing violence and persecution.” On Saturday, President Trump said that the shooter should face the death penalty, and claimed that if there had been armed guards inside the synagogue, the results would have been different.

President Donald Trump: “This has little to do with it, if you take a look. If they had protection inside, the results would have been far better. This is a dispute that will always exist, I suspect, but if they had some kind of a protection inside the temple, maybe it could have been a very much different situation, but they didn’t.”