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Quazi Mohammad Rezwanul Ahsan Nafis, the 21-year-old terrorism suspect arrested Wednesday after allegedly attempting to detonate a 1,000-pound bomb at the New York Federal Reserve Bank, entered the United States in January on a student visa to study cybersecurity at Southeast Missouri State University. According to The Christian Science Monitor, Nafis was recruited by a commissioned agent working on Southeast Missouri's behalf. The New York Daily News reported that Nafis attended classes in Missouri for one semester before transferring to the ASA Institute of Business and Computer Technology, in New York City, where he attended classes regularly.
Asked about the monitoring of international students, a State Department spokeswoman said Thursday that all applicants for visas are checked against a database called the Consular Lookout and Support System, which contains 39 million records regarding admissability into the United States. "So without speaking about the specifics of this case, let me reassure you that all cases are checked against this," Victoria Nuland said at a press briefing. "But it goes to the question of what existed in our databases."