By Michelle
Malkin
© 2003 WorldNetDaily.com
Two questions have been left unanswered following last week's
announcement by Homeland Security Department head Tom Ridge that he has
temporarily suspended travel programs allowing foreigners to fly into our
country without U.S. visas:
- Why did it take so bloody long?
- Why hasn't all visa-free foreign air travel been ended
permanently?
The visa is supposed to be our government's best method for keeping out
foreign menaces. Law-enforcement agents consider it the most important
national security screening mechanism. Yet, airline and tourism lobbyists,
and their water-carriers in Washington, have poked dangerous holes in the
system to benefit the $590 billion travel industry.
Federal officials say last week's suspension of two visa-less travel
programs was based on "new," "specific" and "credible" intelligence
indicating that al Qaida terrorists might exploit them. But there's
nothing new about the widely known lack of security surrounding these
terrorist-friendly airline security loopholes. Eleven months ago, I
reported on the specific use of the Transit Without a Visa program by
suspected Middle Eastern terrorists.
According to an internal Justice Department memo I obtained last
summer, federal anti-terrorism investigators launched "Operation LAX
Lounge," an investigation based on information that four individuals were
using the TWOV program to smuggle illegal aliens, many of whom are Middle
Eastern males, into the United States at Los Angeles International
Airport.
Two of the four involved in the smuggling operation were Jordanian
nationals who worked as LAX contract security guards. Another was a Social
Security Administration official married to one of the guards. They were
convicted of collaborating to smuggle transiting passengers out of the
airport and helping approximately 1,000 individuals – mostly of Middle
Eastern descent – obtain fraudulent Social Security cards between
1998-2000.
Some of the TWOV passengers let free by the Jordanians at LAX are on
the federal immigration and State Department watch list of terrorist
suspects. A few of these fugitive passengers were traced to New York City
and arrested last July, but most remain at large.
I am posting the June 25, 2002, memo – along with a 19-page list of the
nearly 1,000 individuals who fraudulently obtained Social Security numbers
through the smuggling ring – on the Internet at vdare.com.
Despite uncovering this plot a year ago, homeland security officials
did absolutely nothing to stop the TWOV program until last week. In the
meantime, more than a million airline passengers (accounting for roughly
five percent of all foreign nationals entering the country by plane) were
routed to American airport hubs under the TWOV program. Citizens from some
Middle East state sponsors of terror, including Iraq, Iran, Libya and
Sudan, were not eligible. However, foreign nationals from several
terrorist-exporting countries, including Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Egypt and
Jordan, were free to participate.
The program waived visa requirements for passengers who were ostensibly
passing briefly through the U.S. on their way to final destinations
abroad. Airlines were responsible for guarding and escorting passengers in
transit, and were supposedly liable for damages when they couldn't confirm
that program participants have actually departed the country. But the
fines were negligible.
Moreover, since the Immigration and Naturalization Service did not
maintain arrival and departure records on a majority of these transiting
passengers prior to the program's suspension – and since the agency's
interior-enforcement staff remains overwhelmed and understaffed – the
airlines were essentially off the hook for passengers who left the
airports and never came back.
Secretary Ridge, explaining the feds' year-long inaction on NBC's "Meet
The Press" last week, pooh-poohed the TWOV program as "a little door."
While patting himself on the back for closing the small opening
temporarily, Ridge's department is now quietly soliciting advice from the
airline and travel industries on how to restore the program. And Ridge has
assured travel industry money-grubbers that it won't touch an even larger
door into the U.S. – the Visa Waiver Program – for foreign travelers from
more than two-dozen nations.
How many of these visa-free travelers over the past year violated
program requirements, overstayed their visits, and remain in the country
today doing God knows what? The feds have no idea.
Homeland security: Still selling out … and flying blind.
Michelle Malkin's
column is syndicated by Creators Syndicate and appears in about 100
newspapers nationwide. Her book, "Invasion:
How America Still Welcomes Terrorists, Criminals and Other Foreign Menaces
to Our Shores," is a national best seller and now available at
ShopNetDaily. All copies of the book sold at ShopNetDaily are personally
autographed.
