Washingtontimes.com
Justice Department investigators could not locate for questioning nearly half of 4,112 aliens in America they believed had information on would-be terrorists, because U.S. immigration officials didn't know where to find them, the General Accounting Office said yesterday.
The GAO said 1,851 aliens could not be found by anti-terrorism investigators because the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service lacked current or reliable address information, according to a report to Sen. Strom Thurmond, South Carolina Republican and chairman of the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on immigration.
INS made little or no effort to tell aliens they were required to notify the agency of their current address, the GAO said, and there was no INS enforcement of existing penalties for noncompliance. The accounting office said INS "does not appear to have enforced the removal penalty for noncompliance since the early 1970s."
A Justice Department anti-terrorism task force coordinated by U.S. attorneys nationwide had wanted to question the 4,112 aliens after the September 11 attacks. Only 2,261 were located, because of a lack of current address information. Some of the aliens were thought to have information that would have assisted in the hunt for terrorists.
"Recent events have shown that INS's alien address information system cannot be relied on to locate aliens," the GAO report said. "Lack of publicity, no enforcement of penalties for not filing change of address notifications, and inadequate processing procedures and controls explain in part why INS's alien address information is unreliable."
Posted by Suzanne at November 22, 2002