Michael Cutler — February 17, 2016

On January 19, 2016 The Department of Homeland Security posted a notice in its official website about a report with important national security implications “DHS Report: Entry/Exit Overstay Report for FY 2015.”

The actual report “Entry and Exit Overstay Report, Fiscal Year 2015” focused only on the arrival and departure of nonimmigrant aliens (temporary visitors) though international airports and seaports but did not include aliens who were admitted at land border ports of entry.

This report noted that hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens who have failed to depart the United States represented a very small percentage of the total number of nonimmigrant aliens who departed from the United States within the time limit imposed at the time they entered the United States- however, we must remember that we are still dealing with hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens who had been admitted into the United States during FY 2015 and that each and every year more such aliens enter the United States and fail to depart or otherwise violate the terms of their admission into the United States.

The DHS report noted that the number of overstays represented only a tiny proportion of the number of aliens who left the United States within the time they were granted to visit the United States, however, the number of aliens who violated the terms of their admission approached a half million and this is without including aliens who entered through land border ports of entry and/or aliens who may have otherwise failed to abide by the terms of their admission.

The administration has done virtually nothing to locate these illegal aliens.

However, among the nationalities of those aliens who overstayed their visas were aliens from countries that have been identified as having a nexus with terror organizations. The report noted that 1,006 citizens of Lebanon overstayed as did 1,509 citizens of Saudi Arabia. Kenyans accounted for 562 overstays and 1524 Malaysians were among those who violated the terms of their admission into the United States.

Furthermore, as we have recently seen during terror attacks carried out in Europe, many jihadists have European passports. Yet the Visa Waiver Program enables aliens from 38 countries to enter the United States without first applying for and receiving a visa. Supposed enhancements to this program require aliens who are citizens of countries who participate in the Visa Waiver Program to first obtain visas if they are dual nationals or if they have visited several countries such as Syria in the past five years. The question no one has asked and hence, has not been answered is how will we know if an alien who presents a European passport has dual citizenship? How will our officials know if an alien has traveled to the Middle East to one of those countries on the list? This may come as a huge shock to our “leaders” but terrorists often lie.

Additionally, the United States currently has more than one million foreign students attending schools in the United States. There are roughly 9,000 such schools that are authorized to admit foreign students. Under current procedures, the schools are responsible for maintaining the integrity of the student visa program. Where legitimate schools are concerned it is likely that the officials are careful to maintain required records and notify ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) when students fail to attend their classes. However, with so many schools involved, it is inevitable that some schools may commit fraud and not report on students who pay their fees but fail to show up for classes. Indeed, a number of schools have been found to not be schools at all- just criminal enterprises that facilitate the entry of supposed foreign “students.”

On September 10, 2015 FrontPage magazine published my article, “Educating Our Adversaries

Why educating foreign STEM students is bad for American workers and national security.”

The need to track aliens who are admitted into the United States and fail to depart from the United States, or otherwise violate their terms of admission is not a new concept or requirement. Nearly 18 years ago, on August 26, 1998 the Congressional Research Service (CRS) issued a report on the development of this tracking system mandated by section 110 of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRIRA), “Immigration: Visa Entry/Exit Control System.”

This report began with the following paragraph:

Section 110 of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (Division C of P.L. 104-20 requires the Attorney General to establish an automated entry/exit control system to record non-citizen arrivals and departures at all ports of entry by September 30, 1998. This report provides background and analysis on Section 110 and issues related to increasing arrival/departure management at air, land, and sea ports of entry. It will be updated as needed to track legislative action.

The 9/11 Commission further identified this requirement- of tracking aliens who enter the United States to determine whether or not such aliens remained in the United States illegally- and that such aliens must be sought and arrested as a matter of routine, as being essential for national security.

To this point, the staff of attorneys and federal agents who were assigned to the 9/11 Commission issued a report known as the “9/11 and Terrorist Travel – Staff Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States.”

This report focused specifically on the ability of the terrorists to enter the United States and embed themselves in the United States as they went about their deadly preparations. Page 54 of this report contained this excerpt under the title “3.2 Terrorist Travel Tactics by Plot.”

Although there is evidence that some land and sea border entries (of terrorists) without inspection occurred, these conspirators mainly subverted the legal entry system by entering at airports.

In doing so, they relied on a wide variety of fraudulent documents, on aliases, and on government corruption. Because terrorist operations were not suicide missions in the early to mid-1990s, once in the United States terrorists and their supporters tried to get legal immigration status that would permit them to remain here, primarily by committing serial, or repeated, immigration fraud, by claiming political asylum, and by marrying Americans. Many of these tactics would remain largely unchanged and undetected throughout the 1990s and up to the 9/11 attack.

Thus, abuse of the immigration system and a lack of interior immigration enforcement were unwittingly working together to support terrorist activity. It would remain largely unknown, since no agency of the United States government analyzed terrorist travel patterns until after 9/11. This lack of attention meant that critical opportunities to disrupt terrorist travel and, therefore, deadly terrorist operations were missed.

Yet land border entries are still not tracked and aliens who violate the terms of their admission have virtually nothing to fear. The administration refuses to enforce the immigration laws from within the interior of the United States and has provided hundreds of thousands of “DREAMERS” with lawful status and official identity documents without so much as an interview- let alone an actual field investigation.

Politicians from both parties have funded the administration’s actions through the Omnibus Spending Bill. I wrote about this lunacy in my article recent, “Funding Catastrophe: Congress Approves Omnibus Spending Bill.”

On January 20, 2016 I participated in a discussion on the Newsmax-TV program, “Unfiltered” on the topic, “How Long Until the Next 9/11?” The DHS report served as the predication for the discussion on this program.

The failures of the immigration system are certainly not new. The failure to be able to not only track but actually seek to locate and arrest aliens who violate the terms of their admission has been a problem for many decades.

On September 3, 2015 FrontPage Magazine posted my article: “Keeping Track of Visa Violators.”

In this article I discussed the wrong-headed and dangerous Visa Waiver Program whereby aliens from 38 countries are able to enter the United States without first applying for and receiving a visa. Today well over half of the nonimmigrant aliens who are admitted into the United States through international airports and seaports do so under the auspices of this program.

On July 20, 2013 the Washington Times published a truly disturbing report, “Homeland Security loses track of 1 million foreigners; report could hurt immigration deal.” The focus of the report was on the impact the failures of DHS would have on Comprehensive Immigration Reform- not on the impact this has for national security.

Let’s put the newest DHS report in perspective.

On September 11, 2001 America suffered more casualties at the hands of just 19 terrorists, barely out of their teens as America lost to the entire Japanese Navy at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.

Today there are millions of illegal aliens who have run our borders, stowed away on ships or were admitted into the United States as temporary visitors who have since gone missing in America.

The failures of the immigration system have yet to be addressed even as we are warned by leaders in law enforcement and even in congress that the threat of the next terror attack has never been greater.

Missing In America: Millions Of Non-Immigrant Aliens