Counterterrorism Blog

Here we go again! More tales of incompetence by a division of an agency that has been given the name, "Department of Homeland Security." These stories about virtually nonexistent borders, lawyers accused of collaborating with clients to secure residency based on fraud with some of those aliens coming from countries known to have significant al Qaeda activity and the slipshod manner in which residency and citizenship applications are adjudicated by overworked adjudicators. Now, according to information that is "out there" and noted by my former INS colleague and current Counterterrorism Blog colleague Bill West, temporary employees are being trained in a highly abbreviated training program being conducted at FLETC (Federal Law Enforcement Training Center) to enable them to decide who should be naturalized and given United States citizenship. I believe it was the comedian Groucho Marx who in essence said, "I wouldn't want to belong to an organization that would have me as a member!"

Temporary employees should not be entrusted with adjudicating applications for United States citizenship. But then, considering the way that we are blurring the distinction between aliens who are legally present in the United States and aliens who are illegally present in the United States, perhaps this administration just does not care who we naturalize. Certainly the last administration thoroughly fouled up the process known as "Citizenship USA" that I discussed in an e-mail I sent out in the last couple of days, and showed how little quality mattered when compared with the drive to produce as many new citizens as possible. I used to sarcastically suggest that we could eliminate the illegal alien crisis by declaring anyone born on the planet Earth to be a United States citizen and then ICE could focus on only going after those who arrived by flying saucer. Perhaps we could then refer to these agents as the "Men In Black!"

I have resorted to a bit of 'tongue-in-cheek' humor, but this is not at all a trivial our humorous situation. This is, to be certain, a matter of national security. The managers of USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services), the agency that bears the responsibility for adjudicating all applications for benefits, appear to be circling the wagons. They will probably blame the line personal for being disgruntled to deflect the criticisms being leveled at USCIS and the situation in that agency. This is why I am highly skeptical about the administration's effort's to make the removal of employees an easier process. While I certainly believe incompetent employees should be subject to removal, I am concerned that it won't be incompetent employees who will lose their jobs but rather concerned employees who reveal incompetence who will be fired, instead!

According to the article I have linked above, "Yesterday, CIS officials said the agency's system requires adjudicators to certify that the background checks have taken place." Let us look between the lines at that statement. An adjudicator is more than a clerk who simply runs a name in a computer to determine if a name pops up. Certainly that is an important part of the process but it is only the first step in the adjudications process if the system is to have integrity. Obviously, if a name does show up in the system as someone who should be removed from the United States or that there is some other derogatory information, the process ends right there. However, even if the system does not produce a 'hit' as such results are known, the adjudicator is then supposed to make a decision about the bona fides of the application based on the merits of the case. The official response to the issue as to whether or not adjudications were being handled properly focused on the initial part of the process not on the overall integrity of the process. When I was a special agent and I interrogated a 'bad guy' I found that I could learn as much by what wasn't said as by what was said. Part of learning to do an effective interview or interrogation was to learn how to ask questions that would help to get more definitive answers. You could ask a drug dealer if he ever sold drugs and he might, believe it or not, tell you he never sold heroin. He limited his response to that drug because he had sold other drugs and was trying to throw you off without perjuring himself (herself). Often I would tell the suspect whom we were questioning that I wanted him to answer the question I asked and not the question he wished I had asked!

Clearly the official posture taken by the officials at USCIS is to obscure the issue that should be of great concern to all of us- are the adjudicators doing an effective job in adjudicating applications for various immigration benefits including conferring residency and United States citizenship upon aliens?

Doris Meisner, the former Commissioner of the INS was at the helm of that utterly dysfunctional agency during the fiasco known as Citizenship USA. She was quoted in the article concerning the lack of coordination between the adjudicators and the special agents as saying, "That's been a classic problem," she said. "That was a problem when they were in one agency -- the adjudicators and investigators did not work well together. Now it's more important they work together." Indeed there was a problem in getting them to work together. She, perhaps better than anyone, should realize the reason for the lack of coordination between the two divisions. The adjudicators were 'under the gun' to crank out completed applications and the investigative process would only slow that process down. There were all sorts of stories circulating that district directors, the managers who ran the individual district field offices were being threatened with losing their jobs if they did not turn out a huge volume of approved applications for United States citizenship. This went on even after the first attack on the World Trade Center which took place on February 26, 1993. The ineptitude of the former INS according to the findings of the 9/11 Commission, contributed significantly to the attacks of September 11, 2001. Yet, here we go again! Our leaders appear determined to not learn from what has gone wrong in the past. We may well be setting the stage for additional terrorist attacks by not securing our borders, by not enforcing the immigration laws from within the interior of the United States and by conferring lawful immigration status and even United States citizenship upon aliens who should not be so rewarded.

I would suggest that the Congress should exercise some oversight here and subpoena the job descriptions and the critical elements of the evaluations of employees involved with the adjudication of applications. This could, in my opinion serve as the basis for a truly insightful hearing. I would further recommend that they pay special attention to productivity requirements and how much emphasis is placed on quality control to see what is being expected of these beleaguered adjudicators. Indeed, perhaps these documents should be examined for all employees of all agencies to make certain that the 'marching orders' that are given to employees, especially those involved in areas of national security are being given the opportunity to do an effective job. These documents represent the goals given to employees of the government and would be helpful in enabling the Congress to perform meaningful oversight of these critical functions.

It is often said that a chain is as strong as its weakest link. Where the enforcement of the immigration laws is concerned, it seems as though we have weak links and virtually nonexistent links. I only wonder what tomorrow's news may bring...