Another Revelation of Lack of Immigration Enforcement

By Michael Cutler

I have often made the point that in order to protect our nation from terrorists and criminals our nation needs to do more than hire more Border Patrol agents and fortify our nation's borders. While the borders most certainly do need to be better secured, our nation needs to address all immigration issues and see immigration as a system in which the borders are but a component.

An article in yesterday's "Washington Times" shows how by not pursuing visa fraud and naturalization fraud, Iraqi-born Neeran Hakim Zaia, a naturalized citizen who has been charged with smuggling 200 aliens (primarily citizens of Iraq), could have been stripped of her citizenship before she became involved in the current case. This is because in December 1992, Mrs. Zaia was convicted by a federal court in Michigan on seven counts of visa fraud, three counts of bribery, and one charge of alien smuggling. The article was written by an excellent reporter who works for United Press International, Shaun Waterman. The Washington Times, however, did not publish his entire article. I would urge you to read the article in its entirety.

The part of the article that was not included in the Washington Times article dealt with a perspective provided by Janice Kephart, Counsel to the Presidential Commission on the Attacks of September 11, 2001. She made the point that the service side of the former INS often did not work in coordination with the enforcement side. Having been an INS special agent for more than a quarter of a century, I can certainly attest to this critical issue and, in fact, it is this concern that prompted me to recommend to members of Congress before the creation of DHS that the enforcement of the immigration laws needed to be handled by an agency dedicated to law enforcement.

The balance of the article raised another disturbing issue. Apparently many of the aliens who were smuggled into the United States during the investigation of the smuggling organization described in the article were citizens of Iraq. While ICE representatives claim that they had no knowledge that these aliens had any link to terrorist activities, I am concerned that these aliens were citizens of Iraq who were paying significant sums of money to enter the United States surreptitiously. The possibility exists that some of them may, indeed, have sought entry into the United States for nefarious purposes. The article failed to tell where these illegal aliens are. This is the sort of situation that gives me 'cause for pause.' When I assisted the FBI or DEA in conducting undercover drug buys, we made certain that those drugs never wound up on the streets of our cities. I am not certain that ICE is as concerned about making certain that those illegal aliens did not manage to ultimately wind up on the streets of our cities and potentially embed themselves in our country.

Wouldn't it be tragic if some of these smuggled aliens were ultimately discovered to have managed to hide in plain sight in our country as they committed crimes or engaged in acts of terrorism?

Meanwhile, in considering Mrs. Zaia's situation, I am not aware of the reason that she was not charged with naturalization fraud and consequently was not stripped of her citizenship. However, I know from personal experience as a former INS special agent that it was often difficult to get such cases approved by the office of the United States Attorney, the prosecutors who would prosecute such violations of law. I recall a particular case from personal experience that involved a major narcotics trafficker who was identified as a major player in a drug trafficking organization that was being scrutinized by an FBI squad that I was working with as part of the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force investigation. In reviewing his immigration file I found that he had been convicted of several crimes on several occasions involving drug trafficking, money laundering, firearms charges and crimes involving assault. While this guy, a citizen of the Dominican Republic was out on bail, having just entered into a plea-bargain arrangement with a state prosecutor and was awaiting sentencing, he was sworn in as a United States citizen. He had stated on his naturalization application that he had never been arrested, never been convicted of a crime and never trafficked in narcotics. He was sworn in as a United States citizen even though his immigration file contained certified copies of his various convictions and an arrest record ("rap sheet") containing a record of his nefarious past. I was never able to find out why the naturalization examiner who processed his application failed to deny this applicant's application for citizenship considering the crimes for which he had been convicted and the fairly obvious fraud in committed in his application. Following his naturalization, he promptly became a fugitive and failed to turn himself in to begin his jail sentence in conjunction with his plea bargain arrangement.

The FBI also wanted to get their hands on him for his involvement in the drug trafficking organization we were investigating. I went to the office of the United States Attorney in Newark, New Jersey since that is where he naturalized and sought to have him additionally indicted for committing naturalization fraud to facilitate stripping him of his United States citizenship. Incredibly, the Assistant U.S. Attorney I conferred with about this case in an effort to indict the miscreant of committed naturalization fraud, told me that his office had no interest in pursuing naturalization fraud against this guy because they were already charging him with some serious crimes and to his thinking, naturalization fraud was no big deal! Indeed, our government has often treated immigration crimes as no big deal, especially in the days before September 11, 2001.

The Clinton Administration engaged in a program called, "Citizenship USA" or "CUSA" in which millions of aliens were expeditiously naturalized. We were told simply that the government wanted to clear the backlog of naturalization applications. However, those of us who worker for the INS in those days speculated that this was done to crank out many new voters who would presumably vote for the incumbent party in power, the Democrats. As a result of this program, according to the GAO, thousands of criminal aliens were accorded United States citizenship, the highest honor this nation can bestow on an alien. It would be interesting to know if Mrs. Zaia acquired her United States citizenship through this greatly flawed program.

Before you conclude that I am taking a partisan position, I will also tell you that the Reagan Administration engaged in a similar program in which special agents were told to drop the criminal investigations they were conducting in order to help crank out naturalization applications. The reason we were given was that the INS wanted to clear the backlog of naturalization applications. Yet, according to a number of my colleagues who were "drafted" into this program, when they complained that they had seen boxes of rap sheets relating to some of the files of aliens applying to naturalize and that the rap sheets were never placed in the immigration files of the aliens seeking to become United States citizens, they were told to not concern themselves with that situation. Immigration has been highly politicized by politicians on both sides of the political aisle. "Lady Justice" is always portrayed wearing a blindfold, symbolizing that the law is to be administered fairly without consideration being given to anything but the objective facts. Would that this was the case where immigration is concerned!

Clearly the process by which we confer United States citizenship on aliens needs to have much greater integrity. In order to achieve this goal and in order to make use of statutory authority to prosecute aliens for visa fraud and naturalized citizens for committing naturalization fraud, our nation needs to have a sufficient number of special agents who have the authority and insight to bring such cases to the attention of the Office of the United States Attorney that has jurisdiction in that particular venue. With fewer than 3,000 ICE special agents for the entire United States of America, dedicated to enforcing the broad spectrum of laws comprehended in the Immigration and Naturalization Act, the body of law that contains all immigration laws, it is unlikely that many law violators will be discovered and/or prosecuted. The case described in the newspaper article shows how this lack of resources, where immigration law enforcement is concerned, imperils our security. Last week, the House of Representatives passed the border security legislation that was shepherded through the process by James Sensenbrenner, Jr., the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee with the assistance of several other leaders in the House. His efforts and the efforts of his colleagues are commendable although the bill does not address all issues, it is an excellent first step. However, unless our government hires an adequate number of special agents to address the critical issues concerning immigration law enforcement from within the interior of the United States, there will be more cases such as the one discussed in today's newspaper article.

What must be considered is that the 9/11 Commission noted that in order to attack our nation, the terrorists needed to embed themselves in our country and needed to also travel frequently and extensively. When we give an alien a "green card," that is to say, accord him resident alien status, we facilitate his/her ability to hide in plain sight in our country and travel freely across our borders and make it that much easier for such aliens to travel to other countries. When we naturalize an alien we essentially provide that person with the 'keys to the kingdom.' We make it that much easier for them to not only travel across our borders, but on the strength of the United States passport that such naturalized citizens are eligible to receive, we make it far easier for them to travel to many other countries around the world.

As a citizen of this great nation and as a former special agent of the INS, I am particularly frustrated that our government is moving glacially to address these critical issues. The President admits to having ordered spying on people within our nation without the "formality" of first getting warrants as required by law. Yet he seems to be unwilling to secure our borders and restore integrity to the immigration system. How many more criminals and terrorists are 'out there' within our own country hiding in plain sight because we lack the resources and resolve to secure our borders and our nation? How many of them may have fraudulently acquired United States citizenship, further enhancing their ability to attack us? These are disturbing questions especially given the fact that we are engaged in a war with terrorists who seek to destroy us and our way of life.

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