Federal immigration officials are supposed to be the nation’s watchdogs, making sure that foreign criminals, terrorists and others who shouldn’t be here don’t enter the American homeland. But there is mounting evidence that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, formerly the INS, has been granting legal immigration benefits without considering the impact on national security.
For example, last year — after a two-year warning — Customs and Border Patrol began limiting CIS employees’ access to the Treasury Enforcement Communications System, a government database that includes a terrorist watch list used exclusively by law enforcement and intelligence agencies.
A July 25, 2005, internal report issued by CIS’ Office of Fraud Detection and National Security obtained by The Examiner pointedly noted: “In the absence of this information, USCIS could grant an immigrant benefit to someone who poses a threat to national security or public safety.” CBP even stated “categorically that it will not provide any assistance to USCIS callers who have encountered a CBP hit.”
The danger posed by granting questionable people legal status is incalculable — and preventable. At that point, USCIS officials should have slammed the front door shut and refused to admit anybody until this critical problem was fixed. Instead, immigration agents were told to continue approving applications unless they had adverse information.
But without TECS access, former USCIS Director of Security Michael Maxwell told the House Subcommittee on Immigration July 27, case adjudicators can’t see national security “hits” while processing applications. “They were blind to national security risks, but kept adjudicating cases,” he said, adding that CIS officials all the way up to Director Emilio Gonzalez were told of his concerns.
So while American citizens stand in long lines at airports waiting to be searched by one federal agency, another federal agency is helping millions of foreigners qualify for the legal drivers’ licenses and Social Security numbers they need to board those same airplanes — without first checking for known terror links.
Upgrading case adjudicators’ own security clearances to qualify for TECS access would have cost CIS $9.8 million, Maxwell said, and agency managers apparently decided the public’s safety wasn’t worth the cost. They couldn’t worry about national security because they were too busy dealing with a 450,000 backlog of “customers” — aren’t taxpayers every federal agency’s real customers? — vying for legal entry. The adjudicators even failed to turn over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials thousands of files on aliens whose applications had already been denied and who were supposed to be deported. Why? Because ICE demanded a processing fee that USCIS refused to pay.
Nearly five years after Sept. 11, USCIS access to terrorist watch lists is still limited, Maxwell claims. Because the agency stresses quantity over quality, employees are still being encouraged to race through more 3.4 million pending applications to whittle down the backlog, CIS’ top priority. Agency officials even told Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, that they don’t know how many fingerprint waivers their employees have issued — when they shouldn’t have allowed even one.
These “public servants” also don’t have a clue how many spies, terrorists and criminals they’ve already allowed to legally enter the United States and embed in our society like ticking time bombs.
