Turns out, hundreds of immigrants who were supposed to be deported originated from terrorist countries. Not only were they not deported, but they were given citizenship. The error was made at the hands of Homeland Security. Apparently DHS didn’t have the fingerprints needed to check several hundred people’s identities. The report about the screw up was made by the department’s inspector general. He recently made the unbelievable discovery.
Two Known Terrorists Given U.S. Citizenship
To worsen the situation, the FBI claims at least two of the men have been positively linked to terrorism. In most cases, the DHS and federal attorneys have allowed the illegal immigrants to get away with fraud. Only two charges have been made against more than 800 positively identified cases.
“USCIS granted U.S. citizenship to at least 858 individuals ordered deported or removed under another identity. When, during the naturalization process, their digital fingerprint records were not in the DHS digital fingerprint repository,” DHS’s inspector general stated.
The 858 cases of so called special interest countries revolved around suspicious immigrants who’ve been given citizenship. Many of them are also from countries neighboring countries known to have severe problems with fraud. Any country deemed special interest by the DHS are those who pose a potential threat to national security.
Last year, investigators identified 953 cases that were also marked as suspicious. According to the audit, the problem is with tens of thousands of immigrants and illegals as well as criminal aliens. Many of them still have fingerprints on paper cards only. The paper trail makes them very hard to track, although thousands of fingerprints have been digitized.
The inspector general of DHS has said there have been more than 148,000 aliens who’ve been ordered to be deported. Unfortunately, a majority of them cannot be positively identified on the system DHS uses for fingerprint checks.
Are There Terrorists in the United States?
Immigrants who apply for citizenship are told to admit any aliases previously used. But there is no guarantee they are doing so. In fact, it’s likely many of them are lying outright. Instead, they’re giving falsified information to protect themselves. Without a digitized record, immigrants can easily escape detection by proper authorities.
DHS has admitted they’re in a bind. Things are jumbled and, “As a result, USCIS was not made aware of information that may have affected the applicants’ ability to naturalize,” Jim H. Crumpacker, the Homeland Security’s liaison for investigations, reported in a letter to the inspector general.
According to him, they’re working hard at get things fixed. They’ve been uploading more fingerprints into the system with the hopes the problem will be sorted out by the end of the fiscal year. The department stated that they would have had it done earlier had they not ran out of funding.
Authorities insist that more than 850 applications were valid and were justified for approval. And that’s even taking into consideration the applicants previous aliases and real identities.
DHS has sworn to get things back in order so they can re-check hundreds of people they’ve approved. They also promise they will prosecute anyone who they determine is in need of it. The review is said to be completed by the end of the year on December 31st.
