Posted on 08/13/2006 3:22:59 PM PDT by cornfedcowboy
WASHINGTON -- Immigration officials have now picked up all but two of the 11 Egyptian exchange students who came to the U.S. for a summer course in Montana but never showed up for classes.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents tracked three of the students to Des Moines. They were arrested at about 8 p.m. Friday, and are being held in the Polk County Jail.
They will be here until a federal immigration judge decides if they will face charges or be deported. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents won't say what led them to find these students in Des Moines or where they were staying. The students are Ahmed Laket, 19, Mohamed Moghazy, 20, and 18-year-old Moustafa Gafary. Agents are not releasing their pictures.
Others were picked up earlier in New Jersey, Maryland, Chicago and Minnesota. They were part of a group of 17 who arrived in New York July 29 en route to a month-long program at Montana State University in Bozeman. Six reported on time, but the 11 others were no-shows.
Immigration officials said the students are not considered a terrorism risk, but all the no-shows now face deportation.
Montana State contacted Homeland Security officials after repeatedly trying to contact the missing students, under procedures put into place after Sept. 11, 2001, to track foreign students.
Well call me a skeptical, non-tollerant, alertist pig, but....
Perhaps phone calls from London? (Noting that they found some phone calls had been made to US cities.)
The ACLU will be defending them, no doubt.
Did they buy large numbers of pre-paid cellphones?
flogerloon.blogspot.com
Apparently they wanted to enjoy our State Fair. James Taylor was awsome Friday night. I hoped they caught it after they attended the swine barn.
Well, hey, then maybe we should stop helping them look for the other 2. I don't believe this. They wanted them too bad.
So far most of them have ended up someplace where the local airport identity code has an MN in it somewhere.
Back in the good old days of ad hoc charter flights out of NYC (JFK) I found myself with more than one affinity group I didn't know much about.
No doubt I missed some group meetings and went to the wrong terminal in London, but who cares.
I suspect these university "English language enhancement" exchange operations have the same flavor, and not knowing they were with a group 11 of these guys managed to get themselves lost.
Take them all to Israel. Let Mossad interrogate them.
Baltimore?
Perhaps phone calls from London? (Noting that they found some phone calls had been made to US cities.)
Naw - couldn't be. It would have been reported in the NYT if they had.
yeah...here in Indiana, Red State, corn-belt, bible-thumping, and the genius in charge of entertainment at OUR State Fair, headlines none other than....Kanye West.
lost? they were "lost" in all these locales? living where? when you get lost someplace, what do you do?
Perhaps the local "journalists" can round up more details to explain this behavior.
We'll only hear about it if said journalists find something that can be spun to make America, Americans, or President Bush look bad. If it makes these "students," their religion, or their culture look bad, we'll hear nothing.
BTW, one of those places is the Manassas Regional Airport about 14 miles from here. They actually have Arab operated taxicabs serving the area.
It's my guess several of them managed to get there and then end up in suburban DC and in Baltimore with friends of their families, or relatives in their extended families. Probably arrived with advice to "Be sure to call Aunt Alia" along with her phone number.
SO far none of these guys have gone anyplace that can't be explained as "lost". Now that could be part of a plan, or they could be lost.
Although Manassas has no regularly scheduled service, it's not that hard to get a hop to take you there from major airports up and down the East Coast. In fact, "this is the major reliever airport for Dulles International Airport and Washington National Airport.
A reliever airport is one that accepts smaller, private aircraft so that the major airport can focus its capacity on airline operations.
Because Manassas Regional has four flight schools, Manassas has a large amount of training traffic. Training operations account for approximately 50% of our yearly operations, with the other 50% being corporate traffic."
There's that flight training school deal again ~ maybe some of them knew an Egyptian terrorist there eh?!
Hmmmmm. Wonder how long it would take me to get to Des Moines. I've got room for all three of them ... in my trunk.
Put 'em in jail.
Remember, Manassas is a world center for urology ~ this is where Mr. Bobbit got chopped, and fixed, in the same night. Not going to find that sort of thing just anywhere ~ microsurgeons, urologists, etc.
I can see these guys being misled by a guy working at JFK as a janitor or a cabbie finding themselves as fill-in on a training flight in a light plane to Manassas instead of Montana (which probably looks pretty much the same in Arabic).
Happens all the time.
BTW, you get to Indianapolis on a Grayhound, and ask for the bus to Bloomington, they go to Bloomington MN and IL, but not IN.
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