Reports that the Boston Marathon bombings were committed by two brothers whose family immigrated to the United States from the war-torn Russian province of Chechnya immediately sparked commentary by critics of America’s immigration policy. Best-selling author and conservative columnist Ann Coulter said on Twitter: “It’s too bad Suspect # 1 won’t be able to be legalized by Marco Rubio, now.” Florida Sen. Marco Rubio is the leading Republican sponsor of an immigration reform proposal now being considered in Congress. A hearing on the measure was scheduled today in the Senate Judiciary Committee, but Washington Examiner columnist Conn Carroll wrote Friday: “Today is not the day for an immigration hearing.”

However, Monday’s deadly attack in Boston — which killed three people and wounded more than 170 — might have been prevented, if current U.S. immigration law had been rigorously enforced. Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the elder of the two terrorist brothers, was reportedly arrested in 2009 on a domestic-violence charge, a crime that could have led to Tsarnaev’s deportation, the conservative group Judicial Watch said Friday:

One of the Chechen terrorists who carried out the Boston Marathon bombings could have been deported years ago after a criminal conviction and the other was granted American citizenship on the 11th anniversary of the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the 26-year-old killed in a wild shootout with police, was a legal U.S. resident who nevertheless could have been removed from the country after a 2009 domestic violence conviction, according to a Judicial Watch source. That means the Obama administration missed an opportunity to deport Tsarnaev but evidently didn’t feel he represented a big enough threat.

Judicial Watch also cited official U.S. reports about radical Islamic influence in the homeland of the Tsarnaev brothers:

Years before these Chechen terrorists carried out the Boston Marathon bombings Judicial Watch uncovered critical intelligence documents detailing al Qaeda’s activities in Chechnya, including the creation of a 1995 camp—ordered by Osama bin Laden—to train “international terrorists” to carry out plots against Americans and westerners.
The goal, according to the once-classified documents obtained by JW in 2011, was to “establish a worldwide Islamic state capable of directly challenging the U.S., China, Russia, and what it views as Judeo-Christian and Confucian domination.” Further, radical Islamic regimes were to be established and supported everywhere possible, from “sea to sea,” including Chechnya. “Terrorist activities are to be conducted against Americans and westerners…” according to the report issued by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA).