Federal agents Wednesday arrested 55 illegal immigrants who were on their way to work inside a secure area at Dulles International Airport, days after rounding up more than a dozen undocumented workers at a Navy weapons test site.
The arrests at these two locations were the latest in a string of Immigration and Customs Enforcement investigations designed to remove undocumented workers from sensitive sites.
“Unauthorized workers employed at sensitive sites and critical infrastructure facilities — such as airports, seaports, nuclear plants, chemical plants, financial institutions, water and food processing plants, and defense facilities — pose serious homeland security threats,” said ICE Assistant Secretary Julie L. Myers.
ICE agents stopped a bus Wednesday at a security checkpoint at one of the airport’s entrances to check the workers’ documents. One of the illegal workers was found with an airport security badge that allows access to the airport tarmac, where planes are loaded and unloaded, investigators said.
It’s unclear how he obtained the badge, but it appears he may have applied for it through the proper channels using fake photo identification, said Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority spokesman Rob Yingling.
The workers were employed by two construction firms involved in a building project at Dulles. The airport is undergoing $4 billion in construction projects, building roadways, a concourse expansion, an air traffic control tower and an underground train system.
During a day-without-immigrants boycott last month, it was reported that more than half of the construction workers at Dulles didn’t come in for work.
Earlier this week, ICE agents arrested 14 illegal immigrants at the Naval Surface Warfare Center along the Potomac River in southern Maryland, where scientists test and make explosives for Navy warships and aircraft.
Myers also announced the nationwide arrests of 2,100 criminal illegal immigrants, including Wilber Kuk, a 24-year-old Mexican national and member of an 18th Street gang in Washington, who has convictions for abduction, malicious wounding, robbery and use of a firearm.
There was no indication that any of the undocumented immigrants were involved in any terrorist activity, but they are vulnerable to exploitation by terrorists and other criminals given their illegal status, Myers said.
Most of the undocumented workers were flown to an ICE detention facility in El Paso, Texas, for removal proceedings. Those arrested are from Mexico, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala and Bolivia.
Dulles International
» Dulles International Airport has 35 open contracts worth $4 billion and about 2,000 contract workers on site.
» The airport is in Virginia about 26 miles from downtown Washington. More than 27 million passengers traveledthrough the airport last year.
» U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement was established in March 2003 as the largest investigative arm of the Department of Homeland Security.
» No flights were delayed because of the raid Wednesday.
