U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) called for tougher immigration and border enforcement on Wednesday in response to the firebombing attack on Sunday in Boulder, Colo.
Johnson noted that the alleged perpetrator, Mohamed Sabry Soliman, 45, had been in the country illegally since his visa expired in 2023.
“We need to go find the other Solimans and get them out of America,” Johnson told reporters at the weekly House Republican leadership press conference.
According to prosecutors, Soliman shouted “free Palestine” as he threw Molotov cocktails at demonstrators marching to free hostages held in Gaza. He told police after his arrest that he wanted to “kill all Zionist people.”
Local officials said on Wednesday that 15 victims were wounded in the attack, and Soliman faces dozens of state and federal charges.
The speaker linked the Boulder firebombing to the arson attack in April on the home of Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, and to the murder of two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington in May. All of the alleged attackers in those incidents claimed they were motivated by their support for “Palestine.”
“There’s a theme here: Why would terrorists target a young innocent couple or peaceful protesters or the governor of an American state with no jurisdiction over a war that’s happening 5,000 miles away?” Johnson asked.
“It isn’t about Palestine, it isn’t about Gaza, it isn’t about any particular conflict,” he said. “It’s because these people want a complete and total extermination of the Jewish people.”
“There is a targeted left-wing antisemitic terror movement on the rise in America,” Johnson added. “It is an evil that we are confronting, and we’ll continue to call it out.”
