Illegals + Fake Docs + Real Nukes = BIG Problems

By Bill West

The Associated Press and Washington Post today reported that sixteen suspected illegal alien construction workers with false immigration documents were able to enter and work in the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant near Knoxville, Tennessee.

The report identifying the security breach was issued by the Department of Energy Office of the Inspector General (OIG) and stated that �official use only� documents were found in the construction trailer on the Y-12 site where the workers had access. The report indicated the cases involving the workers were referred to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for potential deportation enforcement action. It should also be noted that possession and use of fraudulent immigration identity documents can be a Federal felony offense, and the question might be posed if any of the alien suspects have been or will be criminally prosecuted for such violations?

This incident is, unfortunately, yet another example of the facade of security some of our most critical infrastructure facilities really have. While it is likely none of the sixteen suspected illegal aliens with false documents were anything other than illegal workers working illegally, who happened to be working at one of America�s most sensitive nuclear weapons sites, can this country afford to take that chance even once? What if only one of those illegal aliens had more evil intentions and used his construction employment merely as a cover to gain access to the facility? Can we really be sure that did not occur?

And this is not the first such incident. After the 9-11 attacks, the INS and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) created a Domestic Security Task Force within Florida to respond to potential security threats within the state. One of those investigations, working with the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) in Jacksonville, identified a group of illegal aliens working for a contractor servicing one of the Navy�s nuclear powered aircraft carriers in port in Jacksonville. Those illegal alien workers, who had access to the ship, also had false immigration documents that gained them employment with the contractor. Thanks to aggressive agents and forward thinking Federal prosecutors, all the aliens were criminally prosecuted, convicted and eventually deported, at least sending some deterrent message in the Jacksonville area at the time.

And this is nothing new. In my early INS career in Baltimore during the late 1970s and early 1980s, we routinely arrested illegal aliens who were employed as security guards working in Federal buildings in the Maryland suburbs of DC. We even arrested several illegal Nigerian aliens who were employed by the State of Maryland as Correctional Officers at one of the State prisons�they had gone through the entire hiring and training process undetected, using false documents. Those were interesting arrests; one of them pulled right off his job from the State pen, in his uniform, and booked into the Baltimore City Jail where we held INS detainees at the time.

After 9-11, these matters are supposed to be linked to national security, at least when it comes to critical infrastructure facilities. INS, and later ICE, has made some effort to focus on identifying illegal aliens working at or with access to such facilities via its Operation Tarmac, which primarily looks at airport workers. ICE has very limited interior immigration enforcement resources. While it may try to do what it can with what it has, ICE cannot possibly cover the entire potential critical infrastructure within the US such as chemical plants, water treatment facilities, power plants, hospitals and many others. However, as the Y-12 and Jacksonville Naval Station incidents have shown, there should certainly be a strong and coordinated multi-agency investigative focus on the critical infrastructure facilities that are owned and/or controlled by the U.S. Government.

At least with those facilities, the investigative resources of other Federal agencies might be tapped to augment the limited agent manpower possessed by ICE. As noted in the Y-12 matter, it was DOE/OIG that identified the problem and reported it to ICE. Perhaps expanding the investigative role of certain OIGs, which all have cadres of professional criminal investigators, in these types of cases is worth considering. Bringing every available investigative and enforcement tool to bear in the war on terror, particularly when it comes to securing the Government�s own critical infrastructure, is a must for success. Having illegal aliens with false documents given access to America�s nuclear weapons sites is a scenario better left for TV fiction, not the reality of our world today.

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