DHS PREDICTS DISMAL RATE OF SUCCESS IN THWARTING TRAVEL TERROR
Exclusive: In Wake of Christmas Day Bomb Attempt, DHS Predicts Dismal Success Rate in Traveler Screening
Michael Cutler
The idea that DHS predicts that it will only catch one in four travelers entering our country while committing criminal violations should stop all of us in our tracks.
I am a realist and I understand that in spite of law enforcement’s efforts, many people manage to get away with committing crimes. However, let us stop for a moment and consider that as we hear ever so frequently from our nation’s leaders, “In order to be successful, the terrorists only have to get it right once while, in order to protect our nation from terrorism, we have to get it right every time.”
Yet the Department of Homeland Security is predicting that they will only get it right 26 percent of the time. Do you wonder why I have come to refer to the DHS as the Department of Homeland Surrender?
Each and every year, millions of travelers enter our country at the various ports of entry to be found at land border ports, seaports and airports. Yet Ms. Napolitano believes that her agency will only stop about 26 percent of the travelers who are traveling under false identity documents or smuggling narcotics or other contraband through airports. Incredibly, this number represents and improvement of the 25 percent it racked up in the past year.
The report states that in 2008, 73.5 percent of travelers arriving by air were screened; in 2009, 80 percent of all travelers arriving by air were screened. But this year, 2010, DHS plans to screen 85 percent.
Think of how many travelers have not been screened in previous years and won’t be screened this year– yet our nation claims to be waging a “War on Terror.”
Stop and consider how much death and destruction just 19 terrorists were able to inflict on our nation on September 11, 2001 and yet the Department of Homeland Security bumbles along (bungles along?) even as the citizens of our nation continually face an erosion of their expectations of privacy and freedom in the name of “national security.”
The excuse that the government provides is that most of the criminal violations of law involve the smuggling of small quantities of narcotics but that all passengers are screened before they are permitted to board airliners and their names are compared against the “No Fly” list. However, if you think about how many passengers may have traveled with false travel documents or if you consider how difficult it is to administer a “No Fly” list when many of the names on that list were originally written in a foreign language – especially a language that does not use the English alphabet – you realize how complex and difficult this is.
Think of the various languages where the translation of the name into English is, at best, a hit or miss proposition. How do you accurately translate names that originated in Chinese, Arabic, Urdu, Hebrew, Japanese, Sanskrit and other such languages?
To illustrate my point, consider how many different ways you can write the word Hanukah. That word can also be spelled Chanukah and several other ways. Then, you need to factor in the fact that in some countries the date of birth may be written in a different order from that which we customarily use. For example, if someone has a date of birth of May 10, 1985, is his date of birth 5/10/85 or 10/05/85? As a former INS special agent, I have often found those who sought to obfuscate their true identities by reversing those numbers intentionally but then claiming it was an “innocent mistake.”
One way to increase the accuracy of the screening of arriving aliens would be to immediately end the Visa Waiver Program but the executives of the travel and hospitality industries have been spending unknown millions of dollars to lobby our politicians in Washington to expand the Visa Waiver Program. Today, there are some 35 nations that participate in the Visa Waiver Program.
I have written extensively about the Visa Waiver Program and have even testified about it before a Congressional hearing. While I don’t want to be repetitive, I believe it is worthwhile for me to once again list the six benefits that the visa requirement provides to national security:
1. By requiring visas of aliens who seek to enter the United States, this process helps to screen potential passengers on airliners that are destined to the United States. Richard Reid, the so-called “Shoe Bomber,” was able to board an airliner to come to the United States – although he had no intentions of entering the United States. His apparent goal was to blow up the airliner and its many passengers somewhere over the depths of the Atlantic Ocean by detonating explosives he had concealed in his shoes. Because he is a subject of Great Britain, a country that participates in the Visa Waiver Program, Reid did not obtain a visa before he boarded that airliner. Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called “20th hijacker,†as a citizen of France, was also exempt the visa requirement.
2. The CBP inspectors are supposed to make a decision in one minute or less as to the admissibility of an alien seeking to enter the United States. The visa requirement helps them to do a more effective job.
3. The application for a nonimmigrant visa contains roughly 40 questions that could provide invaluable information to law enforcement officials should that alien become the target of a criminal or terrorist investigation. The information could provide intelligence as well as investigative leads.
4. If an alien applicant lies on the application for a visa that lie is called “visa fraud.” The maximum penalty for visa fraud starts out at 10 years in jail for those who commit this crime simply in order to come to the United States, ostensibly to seek unlawful employment or other such purpose. The penalty increases to 15 years in jail for those aliens who obtain a visa to commit a felony. For aliens who engage in visa fraud to traffic in narcotics or commit another narcotics-related crime, the maximum jail sentence that can be imposes rises to 20 years. Finally, when an alien can be proven to have engaged in visa fraud in furtherance of terrorism, the maximum penalty climbs to 25 years in prison. It is important to note that while it may be difficult to prove that an individual is a terrorist, it is usually relatively simple to prove that the alien has committed visa fraud when there is fraud involved in the visa application. Indeed, terror suspects are often charged with visa fraud.
5. The charge of visa fraud can also be extremely helpful to law enforcement authorities who want to take a bad guy off the street without tipping their hand to the other members of a criminal conspiracy or terrorism conspiracy that the individual arrested was being arrested for his involvement in terrorism or a criminal organization. You can arrest the alien who commits visa fraud for that violation of law and not for other charges that might make it clear that the investigation underway is targeting a criminal or terrorist organization.
6. Even when an alien applies for a visa and his application is denied, the application he filed remains available for law enforcement and intelligence personnel to review to seek to glean intelligence from that application.
Under the auspices of the Visa Waiver Program, none of the above-noted, significant benefits to law enforcement or national security apply.
On May 11, 2006 I was called upon to provide testimony before a Congressional hearing conducted by the Committee on International Relations regarding “Visa Overstays: Can We Bar the Terrorist Door?â€
Certainly if our government can suggest that United States citizens not be allowed to use bathrooms on airliners during the final hour of a flight nor keep a blanket or clothing on their laps the insanity of the Visa Waiver Program should be reconsidered.
Here is something else to consider: New York is the safest big city in the United States. A major factor in this success story is the fact that the United States has some 35,000 police officers. The division of the Department of Homeland Security that is charged with enforcing the immigration laws is ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement). That agency employs about 6,000 special agents for the entire United States of America and many of these agents are engaged in enforcing the customs laws and not immigration laws.
For those who are unfamiliar with the difference between customs and immigration, consider that before DHS was created, the Customs Service was situated in the Treasury Department because the primary concern of Customs was the movement of goods and money across international borders. Customs was also responsible for collecting duties and tariffs. Customs was far more similar to the IRS than it was to the INS.
The former INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service) was involved with the movement of people across our nation’s borders. Immigration law also deals with the presence of aliens (foreign nationals) in our country in terms of permitting them to acquire resident alien status and United States citizenship.
The only similarity between Legacy Customs and Legacy INS is the fact that both were border agencies. However, once you got past the border, they shared little in terms of goals, laws and orientation.
Today, the vast majority of leaders at ICE Headquarters and at ICE field offices around the United States came from Legacy Customs. Immigration law enforcement is given far less attention than is the enforcement of Customs laws. As one of my former colleagues at the old INS has repeatedly told me, “The bosses at ICE are far more concerned with counterfeit Gucci luggage than counterfeit passports!
If, as Ms. Napolitano concedes, many international travelers are getting away with committing crimes when entering our country, then the solution to back up the inspections program and the porous borders that the Border Patrol is unable to secure, is to back up the inspectors at ports of entry and the Border Patrol who attempt to interdict those who seek to evade the inspections process altogether is to hire an adequate number of special agents of ICE to seek to apprehend those who have violated these laws.
There is a term to describe many of these law violators. They are called “illegal aliens!”
Incredibly, there are members of the administration and members of both houses of Congress who are now preparing to provide millions of illegal aliens with United States citizenship, even though there is no reliable way to know the true identities of these millions of illegal aliens. There is, therefore, no way of knowing their nationalities, backgrounds, potential affiliation with criminal or terrorist organizations or even when, where or how they entered the United States.
The admission of failures by the inspections process makes it utterly clear that the only reasonable solution to the failures of the inspections program committed each and every day is to back up the inspections program and the efforts of the Border Patrol with a vibrant, well-staffed and effectively led interior enforcement program by ICE.
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Michael Cutler is a Fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies and a recognized authority who addresses the implications of immigration on national security and criminal justice.
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