Posted on 06/29/2002 6:27:07 AM PDT by demkicker
June 29, 2002, 12:07AM
28 Nabbed by Feds at Fort Worth site Some may have ties to extremist group
By DEANNA BOYD
Copyright 2002 Fort Worth Star-Telegram
FORT WORTH -- Federal agents raided an aviation repair facility at Fort Worth Meacham Airport on Friday morning, arresting 28 workers on immigration violations. Some of them, sources said, may be affiliated with a Muslim extremist group responsible for a string of kidnappings in the southern Philippines.
Kathy Colvin, a spokeswoman with the U.S. attorney's office for Northern Texas, said federal felony charges will be filed Monday against some of the detained mechanics, who were working for Spirit Aviation Services. Colvin said the workers apparently entered the United States through Mexico, the Philippines and Peru.
Officials said the charges will relate to false statements on immigration documents.
Sources said some of those arrested appear to have ties to Abu Sayyaf, a Muslim rebel group in the Philippines that abducted more than 100 people in the past year, including a Philippine nurse and a missionary couple from Wichita, Kan. The three were the target of a rescue attempt this month in which the nurse and husband were killed and the wife was wounded.
Sources declined to discuss the extent of the connections between those arrested and Abu Sayyaf, which has been linked by federal authorities to the al Qaeda terrorist network.
In May, the United States offered a reward of up to $5 million for the capture of the group's leaders. The Philippine government has had a $100,000 reward on the heads of five Abu Sayyaf leaders for almost a year.
One notorious leader of the gang, Abu Sabaya, is presumed dead after reportedly exchanging gunfire with U.S.-trained forces June 21 while apparently trying to flee in a boat from Mindanao island, in the southern Philippines. According to published reports, one soldier reported shooting Sabaya in the back as he tried to swim away.
About 40 agents from the Border Patrol, Immigration and Naturalization Service and the North Texas Joint Terrorism Task Force participated in the 9 a.m. raid at Spirit Aviation.
"The company was very cooperative," said David Davidson, a supervisor with the U.S. Marshal's Service in Fort Worth.
Sgt. Mike Jones, supervisor of the Fort Worth Police Department's criminal intelligence unit, which also participated in the investigation and raid, said the joint operation's purpose was to "make our country safe."
Since the unit formed in December, Jones said, investigators have received "complaints and concerns from citizens regarding Meacham Airport and certain foreign nationals." He declined to elaborate on the complaints.
Jones said the investigation has been going on for months.
Spirit Airlines, the largest privately held airline in the country, started as a Detroit charter company 12 years ago. Today, it is a passenger line with 28 McDonnell Douglas MD-80 planes and makes 100 flights a day to 15 destinations across the United States and to the Caribbean.
The airline's headquarters are now in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Its planes undergo repair, modifications and painting at the Fort Worth facility, which employs more than 100 workers, said Laura Bennett, a Spirit Airlines spokeswoman.
The airline does not operate commercial flights in or out of Meacham Airport, she said.
Bennett said the company has cooperated with authorities since learning of the federal investigation several days ago and had handed over requested documentation regarding its workers' immigration status.
Bennett said that while all employees had provided the company documentation, such as driver's licenses, passports and mechanic's licenses, the investigation apparently revealed that some of the documents were fraudulent.
"This is very sad for us. Some of these people have become friends and were longtime employees," Bennett said. "The picture that is often painted is (that) these are negative people, but in this case, though some of them may be, it certainly wasn't all of them. They were very hardworking, very professional people who, yes, had bad documents."
Bennett said none of those arrested has a criminal record.
A licensed mechanic working with the company, who asked not to be identified, said the company had recently finished running background checks on employees.
"I think that was because of September 11," the mechanic said. "We didn't have September 11 before. That's why they didn't do anything before."
Bennett acknowledged that background checks and fingerprinting of employees were recently done by the company.
The mechanic said he had worked previously with some of the men arrested in Friday's raid. He said those detained included a man recently promoted, another who had just bought a new truck and a third who had gotten married just months ago.
"I feel sorry for the good people -- the good workers," the mechanic said. "They work for money. Everybody works for money and to put food on the table."
What percent of the 8 million illegals are using forged and stolen documents? Very few are farmworkers, gardeners, and maids working on a cash basis. That puts many into a felony criminal class and should make them forever ineligible for citizenship. I think they should make a guest worker program for those few honest-enough types, deport and ban future immigration by the criminals and carefully screen anyone in the future who is coming into this country.
Don't blame the INS for doing what the President and Congress want them to do.
The blame is in Washington, not with the troops on the ground. You of all people should know this.
DITTO !!
They don't want it secured, and to keep it open they will tell you it is impossible to secure it.
We did ... for those interested in flying an Airbus.
Follow the money back to Boeing for your answer.
It will make honest commenting here on FR an act of daring-do don't you think?
A terrorist group is not an extremist group they are 2 totaly different things !
On the other hand, when a company reports it's number of workers to the press, they always tend to overstate. In this case, we learned that the facility employs over 100 people. Now, the catch here is that is probably no more than 110.
The troubling issue here is that approximately 30 percent of their workforce were arrested. 30 percent.
What we need here is an investigation of this company's hiring practices.
Something is afoot.
It's like the last two days of a cold, when your sinuses are loaded with Elmer's Glue and you can't stop coughing to breathe properly......
I was reading on an OKC-related thread just how badly Clinton dumped his anti-terrorist responsibilities from the git. And this was in a link to Laurie Mylroie's interview last October with CNN. She called him intellectually dishonest, in the way he dealt with terrorism as a "law-enforcement" problem rather than a foreign-policy, military, and security problem, and he did so while knowing the difference, and knowing better. And the woman worked for him.
I wonder how Janet Reno sleeps, having been Slick's AG for eight years? She has got to know she's going to be infamous in AG lore as a frontwoman and enabler of one of the worst scapegraces in American history. She's going to end up ranking, among cabinet officers, somewhere between Chump of the Month and Albert Fall, the notorious Teapot Dome peculator.
And I get the pinkies at Dubya every time I see an accusation that he is letting DIRTXPOTUS slide, for political reasons........because, seeing what is going on, it sounds so right. Dubya has his plate full just making sure old dirt from Iran-Contra and the Gulf War screwup don't wind up landing on his plate. He's got his old man and his old man's advisors to cover for.
Bill Moyers is an incredible, inedible, vapid Leftist drone, but he interviewed some people Friday night that made a case why Dubya is so into, um, "discretion" and silence on stuff like Klintoon's defalcations and screwups. A couple of people were looking over the new security bill and saying it'll basically wipe FOIA off the books. Everything will get transferred over to the new agency, and that'll be it, a curtain of perpetual silence will ring down on information the government holds about people. Hmmmmm.
So the question arises, okay, we have an idea how bad it could have been when DIRTXPOTUS 42 was in, and so we have an idea of the dimensions of what DoJ isn't looking into that they need to be looking at; and so, what would it take to make Dubya so clam up and button up, and sweep that vast pile of Klintoon dirty laundry out of sight? What is the deal here? Someone have pix of X41 in bed with Oriana Fallaci? With David Bowie? What is this, giving the Klintoons a pass on felony counts?
Web is the one who can hurt him the worst. Web, and Vernon Jordan. Hmmm.......Jordan will never give him up, discretion is his business and his passion, and besides, DIRTXPOTUS is an "honorary black", and all that.
The other Klintonoids are Kool-Aid drinkers, but Web came up by himself in Arkinsaw, he doesn't owe the Klintoons the way a Mandy Grunwald or a Carville would. Or Begala. No, Web is a non-Kool-Aid-drinking partner in crime who goes way back, but not all the way back, and like Jim McDougal, he must be prey to some pretty bitter thoughts about where the Clintons are, versus where he is, who hauled their trash for them and ate a federal sentence. My money is on Hubbell. What do you think?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.