Immigration officers barred from key data

WASHINGTON – Many immigration officers handling requests for green cards, citizenship and other immigration benefits do not have access to key law enforcement and national security databases, said a top federal security official who quit over the issue.

The officers' access to the databases, which would allow them to check whether an applicant had a criminal record or was on the terrorism watch list, was cut off because the government has failed to complete required background checks on the immigration adjudicators.

Michael Maxwell stepped down last month as director of the Office of Security at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, and sought protection under the federal whistle-blower protection law. He claims that senior agency officials had been retaliating against him for telling Congress about what he described as serious national security vulnerabilities that persisted despite his warnings to those running the agency.

In addition, Maxwell claims the agency lacks the resources to handle some 500 allegations of criminal misconduct against agency employees, including allegations of espionage and acceptance of bribes.

Citizenship and Immigration Services spokeswoman Angelica Alfonso declined requests for an interview. She released a statement yesterday that said the agency is confident of its processes, and that it takes the allegations seriously.

“To this end, USCIS has referred the allegations to the inspector general for further investigation,” her statement said.

Beyond their implications for efforts to prevent terrorism, Maxwell's allegations raise questions about proposals by President Bush and members of Congress to grant legal status to millions of illegal immigrants after clearing them through security checks.

One of his attorneys, Rosemary Jenks, said his concerns demonstrate an underlying tension between Citizenship and Immigration Services' dual missions of providing immigration benefits to applicants and of protecting national security.

She noted that acting CIS Deputy Director Robert Divine is a former member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, which lobbies for generous immigration policies.

Jenks is director of government relations for NumbersUSA, a grass-roots group that lobbies to restrict immigration and opposes proposals for legalization of undocumented immigrants.

Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, a Judiciary Committee member whose staff has been briefed by Maxwell, wrote a letter last week to Emilio Gonzalez, the new CIS director, that echoed Maxwell's concerns.

Maxwell has warned about problems that keep vital information about applicants walled off from CIS employees who decide whether to grant immigration benefits.

That information is held in a database controlled by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, a separate part of the Department of Homeland Security, which has strict policies intended to keep the information from falling into the wrong hands.

Adjudicators for Citizenship and Immigration Services are given access to the database only after they have received a security clearance. But Maxwell has told Congress that the agency has been unwilling to pay for background investigations that Customs and Border Protection requires, his lawyer said.

“If this agency had simply bellied up and paid to have proper investigations done, this problem would not exist,” Jenks said.

In a statement yesterday to Copley News Service, Grassley said, “It's time for CIS to focus on combating internal fraud and protecting national security. . . . How can we expect CIS to take care of 11 million immigrants when they can't take care of their own house?”

More on this subject. Sen. Grassley will be on Lou Dobbs today talking more about this.

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0603/06/ldt.01.html Aired Mar. 6, 2006

[snip]The Department of Homeland Security frequently proclaims it's doing everything possible to protect us and this country from a terrorist attack. It turns out, however, the truth is somewhat different.

The Department of Homeland Security itself is anything but secure. It turns out private guards at the department's headquarters in Washington now say they don't have enough training, nor equipment to provide security to headquarters.

At one point, guards emptied an envelope containing suspicious white powder into the air outside the building. The company that provides those guards, Wackenhut Services, is, by the way, owned by a firm based in Great Britain.

Feeling reassured now?

Still ahead here, charges of bribes, green card giveaways and fraud inside the U.S. immigration bureaucracy. Ready for a guest worker program? We'll have a preview of an explosive new report here next. And how the agency responsible for investigating foreign transactions has consistently violated U.S. law.

DOBBS: A shocking new government report is expected to charge the Bush administration with gross mismanagement of this country's immigration system. The report says the Bush administration's so- called temporary guest worker program has no chance of succeeding because of widespread fraud within our nation's immigration bureaucracy.

CASEY WIAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT : The Bush administration's top homeland security official is again promoting the temporary worker program opponents say is a thinly-disguised illegal alien amnesty.

MICHAEL CHERTOFF, HOMELAND SECURITY SECRETARY: If we don't do some kind of a temporary worker program, I think it's going to be impossible to address the challenge of what could be eight to 11 million illegal migrants who are currently in this country.

WIAN: That estimate is probably low, and even so, the agency that would be in charge of a guest worker program is already overwhelmed and plagued by fraud. What's more, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Service is not expected to be up to the task for at least five years. Those are just some the findings of a Government Accountability Office draft report now in the hands of two congressional committees and the Department of Homeland Security.

Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley recently gave colleagues a preview, saying, "You'd all be shocked if you learned about the internal fraud and abuse at CIS. Officials are being bribed. Visas are being given away. Green cards are being sold."

The year-long study found CIS denied 19,000 applications for citizenship or immigration benefits due to fraud last year. Many of the other 800,000 rejected applications were also likely frauds but denied for other easier to prove reasons. Fraudulent applications are rarely prosecuted.

ROSEMARY JENKS, NUMBERSUSA: If your application is denied based on fraud and you're not prosecuted, then there is nothing that bars you from continuing to apply again and again and again until you get what you're looking for. In the 1986 amnesty, we gave a green card to at least one of the terrorists who blew up the World Trade Center in 1993. And here we are, we're set to do it again.

WIAN: More than 5,000 applicants for immigration benefits are identified as potential national security threats each year. The Bush administration last month asked Congress for nearly a quarter of a billion dollars for the citizenship and immigration service this year to begin implementing its temporary worker program.

DOBBS: The anti-fraud effort, of course, the fraud on the part of those applying for visas and even citizenship in this country. But at the same time, Casey, you're reporting that the institution, the bureaucracy itself, has corruption within it, at least according to Senator Grassley.

WIAN: And Senator Grassley was very clear about that in a hearing on Thursday that received very little attention. The overwhelming fact from this report is that the Citizenship and Immigration Service has absolutely no idea how widespread the fraud is because so many of these applications are denied for other reasons.

DOBBS: None of this even goes to the issue of compatibility of computer systems and databases that are absolutely critical to following the flow of those entering this country.

WIAN: Actually, there is a mention of the computer systems, and that's -- they're five years away of getting computer systems up and running that would detect fraud across the different homeland security agencies.

Senator Chuck Grassley will be talking about his efforts to uncover fraud inside our immigration bureaucracy on Wednesday.

TUCKER: The latest poll by Quinnipiac University found that 88 percent of those asked think illegal immigration is a serious problem. Put another way, 94 percent of Republicans and 86 percent of Democrats see illegal immigration as a serious issue .

House panel votes to block ports deal Fox News March 8, 2006 04:20 PM

WASHINGTON — Despite a presidential veto threat, a House committee on Wednesday voted to block a controversial ports deal that has President Bush in the hotseat. The House Appropriations Committee passed an amendment to attach to a $92 billion emergency supplemental funding measure for hurricane recovery and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The committee vote was 62-2.

"The amendment is straight-forward and is a rifle shot crack to block the Dubai Ports World deal only. This is a national issue. This is a national security bill. We want to make sure that the security of our ports is in America's hands," said Rep. Jerry Lewis, R-Calif., committee chairman.

House Republicans led the charge to pass legislation that would block an administration-approved plan to hand over terminal operations at six U.S. ports to a UAE-owned company, Dubai Ports World. A British company, Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Co., currently operates the terminals in question.

http://khon.com/khon/display.cfm?storyID=11869&sectionID=1161

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