Thread: INS policies criticized as too lenient toward students

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/spe ... 50338.html

Sept. 16, 2001, 6:18AM
INS policies criticized as too lenient toward student

By EDWARD HEGSTROM
Copyright 2001 Houston Chronicle

A law passed by Congress in 1996 would have required the government to look for terrorists by monitoring foreign students, such as the men allegedly responsible for last week's hijackings.
But the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service never implemented the program designed to identify foreign terrorists studying in the United States.

That lapse, combined with the government's record of providing visas to people who turned out to be terrorists, has led critics to question whether the agency has done enough to protect the country by screening immigrants more thoroughly at the border and monitoring them once they are here.
"There is just going to have to be more vigilance" against terrorists by the INS, said U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith, R-San Antonio, who has consistently called for better protection at the borders. Smith called the INS the worst-run federal agency, and he noted that terrorists are sometimes picked up by the agency "and then let go again."

(In a notable 1999 Texas case, in the midst of a nationwide manhunt for rail-riding serial killer Angel Maturino Resendiz, the Mexican citizen was picked up by Border Patrol agents in New Mexico but released because INS officials in Houston neglected to alert them that he was wanted for questioning in several murders.)

A review of previous cases shows that terrorists usually do not enter the United States by sneaking across the border at night. They usually arrive legally as tourists, students or businessmen. Some overstay their visas and remain illegally, while others extend their stay by applying for asylum. In at least two cases, the INS detained and then released immigrants later involved in terrorist plots.

One of the men responsible for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing became a legal U.S. resident thanks to an amnesty approved by Congress in 1986.

In the current investigation, attention first focused on the possibility that some of the terrorists may have come across from Canada recently, first into Maine and going on to Boston. But investigators now believe many of the terrorists had lived legally in the United States for some months.

Two of the men, Mohamed Atta, 33, and Marwan Al-Shehhi, 23, went to flight school at Huffman Aviation in Venice, Fla.

Asked if the two men had studied under a vocational student program known as an M visa, Huffman Aviation President Rudi Deckers said: "I assume they were. We made copies of their passports," which usually happens only when a foreigner has a student visa.

But Deckers said he could not say for certain, because the FBI swept his offices and took away all records involving the students.

If they were here on M visas, the students would have come under the new data-collection system known as the Student and Exchange Visitor Program. It would allow the government to charge foreign students a $95 fee and then check up on them with a computerized record of their biographical information and transcript to see what they study.

The effort to monitor foreign students was approved by Congress in 1996 as part of a broader law. But the plan met stiff opposition from school administrators, who said the new program would be burdensome and intrude on the students' rights.

After repeated delays, the system was set to begin in the summer of 2000 but was pushed back to the summer of 2001. Administrators complained yet again that they could not collect the data for newly enrolled students, so the INS bowed and delayed it again until after fall enrollment.

"We agreed that we would hold off until Sept. 30," said INS spokeswoman Eyleen Schmidt.

Whether the data would have helped spot the alleged terrorists is not clear. INS officials will not comment on the hijacking case because of the sensitivity of the ongoing investigation.

But an INS spokesman said the agency generally does whatever it can to look for terrorists among the 500 million people who seek entry to the United States every year.

"INS enforces this nation's immigration laws based upon our country's commitment to an open, democratic society," agency spokesman Russ Bergeron said. He added: "We do an excellent job, but we are always prepared to do better and do more."

In testimony before Congress in 1998, Walter Cadman, the INS' chief anti-terrorism expert, said the agency had stepped up its efforts to work with the FBI and CIA to identify and track terrorists.

From 1995 to the first quarter of 1998, Cadman said, the INS deported 98 foreigners on suspicion they were involved with terrorists.

Experts who have studied terrorism reach different conclusions on the question of how best to screen for foreign terrorists.

A report released earlier this year by former Sens. Gary Hart and Warren Rudman called for combining the Border Patrol, the Coast Guard, Customs and the Federal Emergency Management Agency into a new super-agency designed to stop terrorists at the border.

Though the authors acknowledge it would be monumentally difficult to shut the borders to terrorists, they say it is particularly important to do so in light of last week's devastation.

"It's not a question of whether; it's a question of how," Hart said. "You can't just say, `Too bad, we're going to miss a few (terrorists at the border), and if we end up with 5,000 or 10,000 dead, that's the price we pay.' "

But another study, by the National Commission on Terrorism, concluded that there is too much traffic at the border to stop terrorists there. The report called instead for focusing on programs designed to stop terrorists by monitoring them closely after they arrive.

The NCT report focused specifically on students, recommending that the long-delayed monitoring system be implemented.

"The question of border security is horribly complicated," said L. Paul Bremer, who chaired the NCT. "We just decided that we could wring our hands about what to do with this impossible problem (the border), or we could look at other areas" like monitoring students.

Congress has given the INS many tools to weed out alleged terrorists. People applying for permanent residency now are fingerprinted and subjected to a background check.

At U.S. airports, immigration officers have the authority to deport some suspicious foreigners on the spot -- a process known as expedited removal.

Those who ask for asylum must be granted a hearing, but they can be detained until the process is completed. In the past, Middle Easterners committed acts of terrorism while free awaiting asylum hearings.

The law further allows the INS to deport foreigners not only for being terrorists but also for associating with them.

While Smith argues for stiffening the laws, others say that is not needed.

"It's hard to see how they could make the laws much tougher," said Joe Vail, a former immigration judge who teaches law at the University of Houston.

Vail and others predict that there may be an effort to tighten monitoring of foreigners. There also may be stepped-up efforts to screen terrorists before they come into the country.

The process of providing visas abroad is handled by the State Department rather than the INS.

In recent years, immigrant-rights advocates have argued that the laws have become so restrictive that they violate the basic rights of foreigners. Practices such as imprisoning asylum seekers have drawn criticism even from the United Nations.

But after last week, things are likely to become even tougher.

"We're just bracing ourselves," said Elizabeth Mendoza, a local immigration attorney who has defended many asylum seekers.

Mendoza said it is appropriate for the INS to step up its screening for terrorists.

"But," she added, "they need to be careful not to begin profiling based on nationality."


Terrorists find ways to stay in U.S.
Many terrorists were already known to the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service before their capture. Some were captured at the border and released. Others had visas allowing them to live in the country, even though they were known abroad as terrorists. Some notorious recent cases:


Mir Aimal Kasi

The Pakistani arrived in the United States on a business visa in 1990 and applied for asylum in 1992. This allowed him to obtain a work permit, a driver's license and an AK-47. Kasi took out an assault rifle and opened fire in front of CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., in 1993, killing two employees.


Rashid Baz

The Lebanese native came to the United States in 1984 on a student visa. He then went to work as a delivery driver. In March 1994, he opened fire on a van full of Jewish students crossing the Brooklyn Bridge in New York.


Gazi Ibrahim Abu Mezer

The Palestinian went to Canada, where he claimed refugee status and was allowed to stay in that country. He tried to enter the United States but was stopped at the border by U.S. authorities on three occasions. The third time, he was taken into INS custody. He was ordered to leave the country in June 1997. The INS recommended holding Abu Mezer without bond and escorting him back to the Middle East under guard. But an immigration judge ruled he could be released on the understanding that he would leave the United States on his own. Once out of INS custody, he stayed in the United States illegally, traveling to New York to begin building pipe bombs with plans of blowing up a subway station. The terrorist attempt was foiled by a tip to New York police resulting in a raid in the summer of 1997.


Lafi Khalil

Khalil, a Palestinian, came to the United States on a tourist visa, which he overstayed, making him an illegal immigrant. A roommate of Abu Mezer, he was arrested in the bombing plot but convicted only of carrying a fake immigration card.


Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman

Though infamous for his role in promoting terrorism in his native Egypt, Abdel-Rahman nevertheless got a tourist visa from the State Department in 1990. The State Department later acknowledged this was a mistake, since Abdel-Rahman was on a "watch list" of known terrorists. After arriving in New York, he was granted permanent residency, but it was revoked. He then applied for asylum and was allowed to remain in the country while his application was considered. He was the religious and spiritual leader of the group that bombed the World Trade Center in 1993 and was later convicted of masterminding a plan to blow up other New York landmarks.


World Trade Center bombing


Most of the men involved in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center came here legally, though some overstayed their visas, becoming illegal immigrants.

· Mohammed A. Salameh overstayed his visitor's visa by more than four years, living in Jersey City, N.J., as an illegal immigrant.

· Mahmud Abouhalima arrived with a tourist visa in 1985. The visa expired, and he stayed illegally. But in 1986, Congress approved an amnesty for illegal immigrants, and Abouhalima was granted permanent residency, obtaining his green card in 1988.

· Ramzi Yousef was taken into custody by the INS when he arrived at New York's John F. Kennedy Airport in 1992 without a proper visa. He claimed to be an Iraqi dissident in need of asylum. Because of a lack of detention space, the INS set him free.

Good article.
And so true. The US closes it's eyes while the number of people who come here legally then slip through the cracks to plot terror and disruption because nobody watches what they are doing.

I can't help but wonder how many Iranian college students whose assets were frozen in 1979 are still here and how many of them actually applied for citizenship. I knew several of them because they were students at Campbell University at the time. One guy couldn't go home because his family had been murdered by the Ayatollah! Others were obviously very, very entrenched in Islam. I didn't think much about it then, but I sure do now.