Month: November 2013

ABC News: “Exclusive: US May Have Let ‘Dozens’ of Terrorists Into Country As Refugees”

Michael W. Cutler, Senior Special Agent, INS (Ret.)

Senior Fellow, Californians for Population Stabilization

Congress has apparently called a “time out” in the headlong rush to provide unknown millions of illegal aliens with lawful status and, of necessity, identity documents even though there have been a long list of extremely worrying reports that make it clear that there is little, if any, integrity to the process by which aliens are vetted by the State Department and by the relevant component agencies of the DHS that are intimately involved with the enforcement and administration of the immigration laws. It is important to remember that the immigration laws were enacted to protect innocent lives and the jobs of American workers.

It must be presumed that once Congress reconvenes that the efforts to once again enact Comprehensive Immigration Reform will resume.

Recently members of the Republican leadership in Congress stated that they would not be willing to provide illegal aliens with pathways to United States citizenship but “only” authority to work in the United States. Two points need to be made about this concept. First of all, these aliens would be permitted to compete, on an equal standing, with American workers who are unable to find jobs already. How would dumping millions of newly authorized workers into that overflowing labor pool help America or Americans? How would the additional remittances that these newly authorized foreign workers would send out of the United States help our struggling economy? Last year, it is estimated, that more than $200 billion was wired from the United States to the countries from which foreign workers- by both legally employed and illegally employed aliens.

Second, and at least as important, is the fact that in order to provide these millions of illegal aliens with employment authorization USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services) would have to provide them with official identity documents. This creates a huge national security danger for the United States as you will see.

On November 20, 2013 ABC News issued a report about the fatally flawed refugee program that, to take a phrase out of the title of the report, “…May Have Let ‘Dozens’ of Terrorists Into Country As Refugees.” My commentary is predicated on that report and the full title of that report is being used as the title for my commentary today.

The nexus between the “lawful” immigration system and national security concerns has been duly reported and noted in the 9/11 Commission Report and in Congressional testimony by a long list of government experts including high ranking members of the FBI and other such agencies. This system t includes the issuance of visas and the adjudication of applications for permitting aliens to attend school or work in the United States as nonimmigrants or to be accorded refugee status via the political asylum program, be granted lawful immigrant status or become United States citizens via the naturalization process.

The 9/11 Commission Staff Report on Terrorist Travel detailed numerous examples of instances where terrorists not only made use of visa and immigration benefit fraud to enter the United States but to also embed themselves in the United States. Page 47 of this report noted:

Once terrorists had entered the United States, their next challenge was to find a way to remain here. Their primary method was immigration fraud. For example, Yousef and Ajaj concocted bogus political asylum stories when they arrived in the United States. Mahmoud Abouhalima, involved in both the World Trade Center and landmarks plots, received temporary residence under the Seasonal Agricultural Workers (SAW) program, after falsely claiming that he picked beans in Florida.

This paragraph is found on page 98 under the title “Immigration Benefits:”

“Terrorists in the 1990s, as well as the September 11 hijackers, needed to find a way to stay in or embed themselves in the United States if their operational plans were to come to fruition. As already discussed, this could be accomplished legally by marrying an American citizen, achieving temporary worker status, or applying for asylum after entering. In many cases, the act of filing for an immigration benefit sufficed to permit the alien to remain in the country until the petition was adjudicated. Terrorists were free to conduct surveillance, coordinate operations, obtain and receive funding, go to school and learn English, make contacts in the United States, acquire necessary materials, and execute an attack.”

In point of fact, I have voiced my own concerns about these flaws and vulnerabilities in many of the more than one dozen Congressional hearings at which I have testified, going back to my very first appearance before a Congressional hearing on May 20, 1997 when the House Immigration Subcommittee conducted a hearing into VISA FRAUD AND IMMIGRATION BENEFITS APPLICATION FRAUD

It is ironic that while that hearing was predicated on two terrorist attacks committed on U.S. soil in 1993, first in January by Amil Kansi, a native of Pakistan and applicant for political asylum who fired an AK-47 being driven into the CIA HQ parking lot in Virginia, killing two CIA officers and wounding 3 others and then the next month when, on February 26^th six innocent people were killed, more than one thousand were injured and an estimated one-half billion dollars in damages were inflicted on the World Trace Center Complex involving aliens from the Middle East who had gamed the visa process and the immigation benefits program, including the 1986 Amnesty program and the political asylum program, that the date of the hearing was almost precisely between those terror attacks of 1993 and the terror attacks of 9/11. The vulnerabilities that were discussed at that hearing were never truly addressed, leaving the door literally and figuratively open to the attacks that would follow more than four years later.

The quarterly publication, “The Social Contract” recently published my article in its Summer, 2013 edition, on how fraud in the political asylum program, a program of which I am a staunch supporter provided that its severe integrity issues be effectively addressed, currently enables our enemies to see in America’s compassion, weakness. The title of my article was:

“Political Asylum: Where Compassion and National Security Intersect”

The springboard for my piece was the terrorist attacks conducted by the Tsarnaev brothers at the Boston Marathon on April 15, 2013. According to publicly available information, they had been granted political asylum in the United States, apparently claiming “credible fear” that they would face persecution, or perhaps worse, if they were to return to their native Russia. Published reports indicated that subsequent to being granted to political asylum they did, nevertheless, travel to Russia of their own volition, calling into question the bona fides of their claims of credible fear.

On May 2, 2013 I was interviewed by Megyn Kelly of Fox News to discuss the immigration aspects of this case. Fox News posted a video of the interview on its website with the title:

“Immigration Expert: The System Failed in Boston and Keeps on Failing”

What is utterly unfathomable is that with all of these hearings and all of the statements and, indeed the findings of the nexus between immigration fraud including fraud committed in the political asylum program as noted in both 9/11 Commission Report and the 9/11 Commission Staff Report on Terrorist Travel. Absolutely less than nothing was done to address this vulnerability in the Senate’s immigration bill, S. 744. In fact, under the aegis of this supremely wrong-headed program, unknown millions of illegal aliens would be provided with lawful status and identity documents. These are aliens who evaded the inspections process that is supposed to prevent the entry of among other categories of aliens whose presence would be damaging or dangerous to America and Americans are criminals, spies, terrorists, war criminals and human rights violators.

There would be no way to conduct in-person interviews of these illegal aliens and no resources to conduct field investigations to determine the truthfulness of material facts provided by the applicants in their applications. Adjudications officers would be “under the gun” to approve the vast majority of these applications because they will need to keep up with the flood of applications landing on their desks each and every day. An application can be approved in minutes while a denial requires hours, days or, in some instances, weeks to justify. Simply stated, there would be no way for the bureaucratic conveyor belt to keep up with the onslaught of applications. In point of fact, USCIS, the beleaguered, inept or overburdened agency that would be tasked with dealing with the nightmare already processes more than 6 million applications each year.

On Friday evenings I host a BlogTalk radio program, “The Michael Cutler Hour” and often invite guests to discuss important issues. On July 27, 2012 my guest was Jerry Casale, a former colleague at the INS who recently retired from USCIS as an Adjudications Officer at Headquarters. Our discussion focused on the plight of the the adjudicators who were expected to keep up with the backlog of applications.

The topic generated so much interest that I invited Jerry back for a follow-up interview on April 5, 2013.

On July 30, 2013 the Washington Times published a truly disturbing report:

Homeland Security loses track of 1 million foreigners; report could hurt immigration deal

Here is how this important report begins:

The Homeland Security Department has lost track of more than 1 million people who it knows arrived in the U.S. but who it cannot prove left the country, according to an audit Tuesday that also found the department probably won’t meet its own goals for deploying an entry-exit system. The findings were revealed as Congress debates an immigration bill, and the Government Accountability Office’s report could throw up another hurdle because lawmakers in the House and Senate have said that any final deal must include a workable system to track entries and exits and cut down on so-called visa overstays.

The government does track arrivals, but is years overdue in setting up a system to track departures — a goal set in a 1996 immigration law and reaffirmed in 2004, but which has eluded Republican and Democratic administrations.

It is interesting to note that the focus of the report was how this failure to track the departure of one million foreign visitors might adversely impact Comprehensive Immigration Reform yet it blithely failed to note that what is of greater importance is that the failure to track the departure of one million nonimmigrant visitors poses a threat to national security! Remember, the implementation of an effective tracking system, known as US-VISIT, was a key mandate of the 9/11 Commission!

Here is a somewhat different title that I would have given the story: “Homeland Security loses track of 1 million foreigners: America’s national security seriously compromised.”

Going back to the focus of the Washington Times article and the fact that one million aliens have gone missing- this is not a new problem. In fact, On May 11, 2006 I testified before the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations of the Committee on International Relations on the topic:

“VISA OVERSTAYS: CAN WE BAR THE TERRORIST DOOR?”

In May, 2010 I was interviewed by CNN’s Casey Wian for a report that was titled,

“Tracking Down Visa Violators.”

On May 10, 2010 I was interviewed by Daniel Gonzalez, a reporter with the Arizona Republic for an news report titled,

“U.S. not cracking down on immigrants with expired visas.”

There are not new concerns nor are the facts as reported in the ABC News report made public yesterday the first time that reports have been issued by news agencies or governmental oversight organizations such as the GAO (General Accountability Office) and OIG (Office of the Inspector General).

On July 27, 2006 I testified before the House Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Claims on the topic:

WHETHER THE ATTEMPTED IMPLEMENTATION OF THE REID-KENNEDY IMMIGRATION BILL WILL RESULT IN AN ADMINISTRATIVE AND NATIONAL SECURITY NIGHTMARE

A brief video of a segment of my testimony before that hearing provides crystal clarity about my grave concerns about the nexus between any such amnesty program and national security.

What I said back then is just as relevant today.

Here are a few links to some recent articles I have written that focus on the failures of the immigration system which have created national security vulnerabilities for the United States and hobble efforts to wage a successful “War on Terror” to protect America and Americans from the ongoing threat of terrorism:

The “Gang of Eight” and Immigration Reform: “Bordering on a National Security Nightmare”

Audit: Feds’ immigration check system fails 12 percent of the time

Problems still abound in student visa program

Fraud: The Immigration Vulnerability That Undermines the Immigration System and National Security

GAO REPORT ON GENERAL AVIATION SECURITY TSA’s Process for Ensuring Foreign Flight Students Do Not Pose a Security Risk Has Weaknesses

Naturalized security threats retain U.S. Citizenship

“Visa Waiver Program Endangers our Safety and Security”

Fingerprint records reveal 825,000 immigrants with multiple names, inconsistent birth dates

“Comprehensive Immigration Reform: Background Checks Require a Reality Check”

On April 13, 2013 ICE posted a news release: New York City lawyer sentenced to 5 years in prison for operating substantial immigration fraud scheme.

Here is a quote from that release:

Earl Seth David, 45, ran a scheme in which he and his co-conspirators applied for legal status for tens of thousands of illegal aliens based on phony claims that they had been sponsored for employment by U.S. employers.

David was indicted October 2011, and extradited to the United States from Canada in January 2012. He pleaded guilty in April 2012 to one count of conspiracy to commit immigration fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud.

It is mind-boggling that after all of the potential counts to his indictment, David was permitted to plead guilty to just one count each of immigration fraud and mail fraud when it is believed that he committed thousands of separate crimes.

This next quote is no less mind-boggling:

David continued to operate the scheme even after he was suspended from the practice of law in New York State in March 2004.

He fled to Canada in 2006 after learning that his firm was under federal criminal investigation. However, illicit profits from the scheme continued to be funneled to him in Canada…”

How in the world did USCIS continue to accept and process applications from the offices of an attorney whose license had been suspended and who was operating outside the United States?

Additionally, there was no mention of any efforts to identify, locate or arrest any of the estimated more than 25,000 aliens who successfully gamed the immigration system. The 12 individuals who have been thus far named did not include any of the tens of thousands of aliens who benefited from their crimes and are, it must be presumed, un-indicted co-conspirators.

In the days, weeks and months after the terror attacks of September 11, 2001 a parade of self-righteous indignant politicians stood before a sea of cameras and pounded the podium and demanded to know why “No one connected the dots.”

The dots have been connected again and again ad nauseum. Yet these same politicians are now demanding that a law be enacted that violates the findings and recommendations of the 9/11 Commission even as new “horror stories” emerge with regularity showing how terrorists are clearly able to easily enter the United States and embed themselves by availing themselves of immigration benefits to which they were not entitled but received because of the utter lack of integrity to the adjudications process at USCIS. Comprehensive Immigration Reform would only make matters worse- far worse. Yet the push continues for passage for Comprehensive Immigration Reform.

I articulated my concerns about the previous attempt to enact Comprehensive Immigration Refom in my Op-Ed that the Washington Times published on June 22, 2007 and that Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama quoted from, on three separate dates, from the floor of the U.S. during the contentious floor debates. In my piece I recommended that Comprehensive Immigration Reform be given a more honest and descriptive title, I suggested that it be renamed the “Terrorist Assistance and Facilitation Act!”  

My article was entitled:

Immigration bill a ‘No Go’

What I said back then certainly applies today, and then some!