Thread: Arrest Made in Newark Airport Scare

It took me a while to find an article that didn't just focuses on the innocent kiss and harsh punishment that he faces, instead of the fact he was able to breach security, shut down air port terminals, leave the airport, which caused a multi-day manhunt.

[img]http://media.voanews.com/images/300*300/ap_us_newark_airport_evacuation_300_09Jan10.jpg[/img]
28-year-old Haisong Jiang, left, is lead out of the Port Authority Police building at Newark Airport, 09 Jan 2010

The man believed to have breached airport security, causing a six-hour lockdown in a U.S. airport Sunday has been arrested.

Twenty-eight-year-old Haisong Jiang was taken into custody by the Port Authority Friday evening at his home in New Jersey.

The agency said he is being charged with defiant trespassing and is being held at the airport.

Sunday's breach led the Transportation Security Administration to shut down a section of Newark airport, causing delays for thousands of passengers.

The security officer who left his post, allowing the man to slip past a security cordon, has been on administrative leave since Tuesday.

A union official representing the guard, who has not been named, defended him, saying he has been "rated a model employee."

The arrest comes a day after a New Jersey senator released security footage of the breach, showing the man slipping under a security cordon to embrace a departing female passenger. The two then walked away hand-in-hand toward the boarding area.

In the video, the TSA guard is shown asking the man to move away from the secure area.

Later, the officer leaves his post and heads for the airport concourse, and the man slips into the secure area.

The TSA said in a statement the circumstances surrounding the incident are under review.

The TSA was formed after the terrorist attacks against the United States on September 11, 2001.

Some information for this report was provided by AP.

http://www1.voanews.com/english/news/us ... 65332.html

Like this one.


Haisong Jiang just wanted a hug from girlfriend when he breached security at Newark Liberty Airport

BY Kerry Wills and Christina Boyle
DAILY NEWS WRITERS

Saturday, January 9th 2010, 7:56 PM

He did it for love.

The Chinese graduate student who snuck through a Newark Airport checkpoint to steal a kiss from his girlfriend - sparking a massive security scare - was described Saturday as a hopeless romantic.

Pals were shocked to discover Haisong Jiang, 28, was responsible for shutting down Terminal C for seven hours, causing more than 100 flight delays and stranding thousands of passengers last Sunday.

Outside his home in Piscataway, N.J., they insisted the quiet scholar could not have meant any harm and is just a guy with a big heart smitten with the love of his life.

"This man is very romantic. He's a very good man," said Andy Rui, 28, one of Jiang's best friends.

"He just wanted to say goodbye to his girlfriend, I don't think he realized what he [was] doing," said another pal, Ning Huang, 33, who plays soccer with Jiang.

Jiang, a bio-medical research student at Rutgers University, was arrested Friday after cops identified him as the man who illegally passed through a security checkpoint into a secure area so he could prolong his farewell to his girlfriend.

TSA guard Ruben Hernandez had temporarily left his post unguarded, highlighting porous security at the airport despite recent terror alerts.

Jiang, who came to the U.S. in 2004 from Jiangxi province in China, is charged with defiant trespass, which carries up to 30 days in jail.

He was released from custody and will be arraigned this week. He did not return home after his highly publicized arrest.

Friends said he and his girlfriend have been carrying on a bicoastal relationship for a year. She was returning to Los Angeles after spending Christmas with him.

"He was totally excited, even before his girlfriend visited," said one of his roommates, who only gave his first name, Hui.

"He was very excited to find a real good woman."

Grace Chen, who went to college with Jiang in Shanghai, pronounced him "in love."

"It's wrong for him to cross that line but I just think he didn't think too much before he did that," Chen said. "They have a long-distance relationship and she's going back to California so it was probably just his first response."

cboyle@nydailynews.com

www.nydailynews.com

Which is the Real Story? New York or Chinas?

Losing sight of the huge watermelon
By Chen Weihua (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-01-12 06:49
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Jiang Haisong, a 28-year-old Chinese doctoral student at Rutgers University in northeastern United States, won't easily forget the recent kiss he had with his girlfriend.

Jiang ducked the security rope at the Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey on Jan 3 to say goodbye to his girlfriend while a Transportation Security Administration (TSA) guard was away momentarily. A bystander reported the security breach to TSA officials and three terminals were shut down for some seven hours, stranding 16,000 domestic and international passengers at the busy transit hub.

The local police conducted a five-day manhunt before they found and arrested Jiang last Friday evening. He was released after hours of questioning.

The Newark Municipal Court will hear Jiang's case this week on the charges of defiant trespassing as alleged by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. The fine is usually up to $500.

But this is not a simple case.

New Jersey Senator Frank Lautenberg has called for a harsh punishment. Some have suggested revoking Jiang's student visa and deporting him, although US immigration officials said a misdemeanor would not justify a visa withdrawal.

It is true what Jiang did was totally inappropriate and illegal, but he does not deserve to be kicked out of the country simply because he is an international student who committed a misdemeanor.

This is not to say that Jiang, a molecular biosciences doctoral student set to graduate in the coming May, is the kind of future scientist the US wants to attract, but US laws should not treat foreign students differently from American citizens.

Jiang clearly didn't realize his bad timing. The maximum security and the kind of paranoia at US airports after Sept 11, 2001, means zero tolerance for any security offense. For one thing, such a prolonged shutdown of airport terminals would unlikely be imposed in other parts of the world in the event of a similar security breach.

The timing actually could not be worse: US authorities have been excessively criticized lately after a radical Nigerian youth tried to blow up a Detroit-bound Northwest Airlines flight with a chemical bomb, only nine days before Jiang's drama.

While Jiang was condemned by many angry Americans, he was also hailed by some as a hero for exposing and alerting TSA security loopholes, such as the ineptness of surveillance cameras and the airport's guards. That is what Sen Lautenberg should truly care about.

Jiang has in a way stirred up Americans about how lax airport security is despite huge efforts pledged by the US Department of Homeland Security.

Just imagine what would happen if Jiang were another crazy man who was carrying a self-made bomb. He could have had killed hundreds or thousands of people.

What Jiang's improper behavior exposed was truly embarrassing for authorities, similar to an incident years ago when reporters from the New York Daily News and other media organizations had succeeded in smuggling banned items through airport security for story assignments.

That said, Jiang owes a sincere apology to the passengers inconvenienced by the delay. He should feel sorry for the sum of US taxpayers' money spent in the following days' search and investigation. However, he also deserves some thanks from the public for unintentionally exposing loopholes in the so-called maximum-security airports. Heightened security from now on would probably help prevent terrorists from boarding flights in the future.

While actions by the Daily News journalists and Jiang would be both called unethical and illegal, we should not "pick up a sesame seed while losing sight of a watermelon" as the Chinese saying goes. In this case, Jiang is the sesame seed while the gigantic security loophole is the watermelon.

I plan to go to the Newark Municipal Court to attend Jiang's hearing. I wish him good luck.

E-mail: chenweihua@chinadaily.com.cn

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/opinion/20 ... 303024.htm

I heard Lautenberg was furious at the "slap on the wrist" this guy got.

Ironic how Lautenberg has no problem will millions of illegal aliens, of unknown backgrounds, in our midst.