{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.cotton.senate.gov/news/press-releases/cotton-colleagues-demand-biden-deny-iranian-president-raisi-visa-to-new-york", "Cotton, Colleagues Demand Biden Deny Iranian President Raisi Visa to New York", "2022-08-02", "2022", "2022-08", "Republican", "Senate", "AR", "Tom Cotton", "C001095", "www.cotton.senate.gov", "cotton", "https://www.cotton.senate.gov/news/press-releases", "scraper", "FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASEContact: James Arnold or Mary Collins Atkinson (202) 224-2353\n\nAugust 2, 2022\n\nCotton, Colleagues Demand Biden Deny Iranian President Raisi Visa to New York\n\nWashington, D.C. \u2014 Senators Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas), Rick Scott (R-Florida), Marco Rubio (R-Florida), Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), Marsha Blackburn (R-Tennessee), and Ted Cruz (R-Texas) today sent a letter to President Joe Biden demanding that he deny visas for Iranian President Raisi and his delegation to attend the United Nations General Assembly in New York City in September.\n\nIn part, the senators wrote, \u201cRaisi\u2019s involvement in mass murder and the Iranian regime\u2019s campaign to assassinate U.S. officials on American soil make allowing Raisi and his henchmen to enter our country an inexcusable threat to national security.\u201d\n\n\u201cIf recent reports are true that Raisi plans to attend the UN General Assembly, the White House must deny Raisi and other Iranian officials visas to attend. Allowing Raisi to travel to the United States\u2014while his agents actively work to assassinate senior American officials on U.S. soil\u2014would gravely endanger our national security, given the likely presence of IRGC agents in the Iranian delegation,\u201d the senators continued.\n\nText of the letter may be found here and below.\n\nPresident Joseph R. Biden\n\nThe White House\n\n1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.\n\nWashington, D.C. 20500\n\nDear President Biden,\n\nWe urge you to deny visas for Iranian President Raisi and his delegation to attend the United Nations General Assembly in New York City in September. Raisi\u2019s involvement in mass murder and the Iranian regime\u2019s campaign to assassinate U.S. officials on American soil make allowing Raisi and his henchmen to enter our country an inexcusable threat to national security.\n\nRaisi\u2019s record as a violator of human rights is long-standing and clear. In 1988, while deputy prosecutor of Tehran, Raisi served on a Death Commission which sentenced approximately 5,000 prisoners to death, including women and children, without the right to appeal or a fair trial. Raisi is proud of his record; in 2018, he defended the commission, calling it \u201cdivine punishment\u201d and \u201cone of the proud achievements of the system.\u201d In the decades since, Raisi continued to subject the Iranian people to extrajudicial prosecution, torture, and execution, such as during the 2009 Green Revolution or in his more recent tenure as the head of Iran\u2019s judiciary. Raisi\u2019s role in these gross human rights abuses led the Department of the Treasury\u2019s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) to sanction him in 2019, pursuant to Executive Order 13876.\n\nWhile Raisi continues the regime\u2019s wave of repression at home, agents of Iran\u2019s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a U.S.-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization, plot to assassinate current and former senior U.S. officials in the United States. In March, the Washington Examiner reported that the Department of Justice had indictable evidence that IRGC Quds Force operatives were planning to assassinate former U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton. The IRGC has reportedly been plotting similar efforts against former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former CENTCOM Commander Kenneth McKenzie, and other former officials. According to news reports earlier this month, the IRGC is also targeting current U.S. officials as part of its assassination campaign.\n\nIf recent reports are true that Raisi plans to attend the UN General Assembly, the White House must deny Raisi and other Iranian officials visas to attend. Allowing Raisi to travel to the United States\u2014while his agents actively work to assassinate senior American officials on U.S. soil\u2014would gravely endanger our national security, given the likely presence of IRGC agents in the Iranian delegation. Furthermore, granting a mass murderer like Raisi a visa to enter our country would also legitimize his repression. It is a risk we cannot and should not take.\n\nThere is strong precedent for denying an entry visa to foreign leaders. In 1988, the United States barred PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat from entering the United States to attend a meeting of the United Nations. In 2014, President Obama denied an entry visa to Iranian UN Ambassador Hamid Aboutalebi, who was involved in taking American diplomats hostage in 1979. In 2020, the United States declined to issue a visa for Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif. Ebrahim Raisi\u2019s role in the regime\u2019s human rights abuses and Iran\u2019s continuing efforts to murder American officials should more than disqualify him from receiving a visa to the United States.\n\nThank you for considering this important matter of national security.", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-08T02:59:24Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.cotton.senate.gov/news/press-releases/cotton-colleagues-demand-biden-deny-iranian-president-raisi-visa-to-new-york"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.7618611454963684, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}