Despite the growing worldwide terrorist threats, new reports indicate that the U.S. still has not tightened one key area of homeland security — student visas.
The Department of Homeland Security has lost track of more than 6,000 foreigners who entered the United States on student visas that have now expired, ABC News reports. This was a major security gap that was supposed to be fixed after the 9/11 terror attacks.
More than one million foreign students come into the U.S. each year on student visas. Over the past year, DHS found that 58,000 students overstayed their visas and 6,000 were found to need follow-up because they were considered a “heightened concern.”
“My greatest concern is that they could be doing anything,” Peter Edge, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement official who oversees investigations into visa violators, told ABC. “Some of them could be here to do us harm.”
Tightening up the student visa program was one of the major recommendations made by the 9/11 Commission because the hijacker who flew Flight 77 into the Pentagon had entered the U.S. on a student visa but never showed up for school.
Since the 9/11 attacks, 26 student visa holders have been arrested in the U.S. on terror-related charges, ABC found.
Thomas Kean, the 9/11 Commission Co-Chair, told ABC that he was “stunned” nothing had been done on this front, noting that this is a common strategy terrorists use to get onto U.S. soil. The man who drove the van containing explosives into the World Trade Center garage in 1993 was also a student visa holder and was a no-show at school, Kean said.
“It’s been pointed out over and over and over again and the fact that nothing has been done about it yet… it’s a very dangerous thing for all of us,” Kean said. “The fact that there’s been no action on this is very bothersome.”
It seems the President of the United States is not the only one that has “no strategy” for dealing with the current terror threats.
