Originally Posted by
Wally Bird
The FBI was pursuing Hamzi and Mihdhar in August 2001 as possible suspects in the USS Cole bombing. All the hijackers had valid visas, Mihdhar being the last to arrive in July, so I'm not sure where you get "in the country illegally". INS had had the opportunity to stop each and every one as they entered but had (apparently) no reason to do so.
I should have written convicted criminals, obviously they were guilty of conspiracy but I think one has to be charged to legally qualify as a potential criminal. AFAIK it has not been definitively established if one or more were using alibis but no criminal records were found when issuing visas. I hope. (NB. Binalshibh the likely number 20 had been denied a visa.)
The acid test is: if a similar 'clean' group of terrorists, armed with valid visas, presented themselves at a border today what would happen ? Yes, they would be fingerprinted and photographed, then what ? Detained - why ? Turned away - on what basis ? Put on the NFL - maybe ?
They came in under the radar. The radar may be a bit better now but it's far from ironclad.
I get in the country illegally because I know Immigration Law very well. You have touched on a topic that we could write for hours about. They were all in the country illegally. All of their visas were obtained by fraud, which by US Immigration law made them illegal at
entry. If the US Laws had been followed as they should have been the visas would never have been issued. Most if not all of the visa applications were not complete and contained errors. Yes, their documents were valid but should not have been issued. Several had problems during their entry, Visa questions, purpose of travel and adjustment questions and were given waivers because we didn't want to inconvenience travelers
I have heard numerous times in this forum "we should not be hassling people over minor errors." The system at that time very much subscribed to that mindset. It was taken advantage of be those that wished to do us harm. The processes are in existence for a reason. The more exceptions to the processes you introduce the less effective the process becomes. There were very large problems and gaps in the system back then. A lot of work has been done to fix the problems. A lot of progress has been achieved but it is not perfect and has a long way to go. It never will be perfect. You strive to be as effective and close to perfect that you can be. It will never be ironclad. Folks here rebel at the limited questions that get asked on entry now. The percentage of real in depth interviews that are performed on entry are very very low. There is a book called 9/11 and Terrorist Travel it is a good read if for nothing else it gives the public a look at copies of the actual documents used and the visa applications used to obtain them.
FB