OUR NATIONAL SECURITY HAS BEEN COMPROMISED
Michael Cutler
I receive news reports from a number of people including a highly placed official on Capitol Hill whom I have had the privilege of working with for more than a decade, as well as Bruce DeCell, a good friend and a founding member of 9/11 Families for a Secure America, an organization created by the families of the victims of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
Before we delve into the news article and the obvious success of the agents and prosecutors, I think it is extremely important to put things in perspective.
How many times have you exceeded the speed limit and not been pulled over by the police? How many times have you witnessed some prime examples of idiotic driving and were frustrated that "There are no cops around when you need them?"
I do not intend to minimize the achievements of the law enforcement officials who collaborated in this case and succeeded in the successfull prosecution of 5 outrageous criminals. What I want to make clear is that for every criminal who is arrested, there are ever so many others who go unidentified and unpunished.
I can assure you, without any equivocation, that there are many, many more individuals "out there" conspiring with aliens to enable them to commit immigration fraud and successfully game the immigration system each and every day.
I also must call your attention to a sentence that appears at the beginning of the report:
Prosecutors said it was one of the most audacious immigration scams in the nation, one that resulted in hundreds of foreigners winning asylum in the United States by concocting phony claims that they were being persecuted in their homelands.
Now I ask that you consider the sentence that appeared towards the end of the article:
Meanwhile, immigration authorities must decide whether to review the cases of hundreds of immigrants who were granted asylum through the scheme.
Please stop and consider that sentence. The immigration authorities must decide whether to review the cases of the clients of the lawyers who were granted on committing fraud on a wholesale basis, running what appears to have been an assembly line?
Is this a serious question that needs to be asked?
The attorneys were just convicted of conspiring to commit immigration fraud and the authorities need to ask if they should review the cases involved?
How in blazes could this question even be asked?
Do you think that the IRS would not review all of the tax returns of an accounting firm that had been involved in large-scale conspiracies to commit tax fraud or tax evasion?
Immigration fraud is an embedding tactic of terrorists. Don't take my word for it, check out what the 9/11 Commission had to say about immigration fraud.
An extensive report was prepared by staff members of the 911 Commission that was entitled, “The 9/11 Commission Staff Report on Terrorist Travel. You can find the entire report online.
Here is a passage from that report that I believe is of critical importance:
3.2 Terrorist Travel Tactics by Plot
During the 1990s, al Qaeda was either directly or indirectly involved in a number of terrorist plots in the United States that partially or totally failed. A study of these plots and how those involved in them moved about clearly indicates that foreign terrorist operatives were being planted in the United States and that foreign terrorist operations were being planned against Americans here at home.
The attempted operations were valuable to those carrying them out despite their lack of success: they gave Islamic terrorists critical operational experience in entering and “embedding” in the United States. Although there is evidence that some land and sea border entries without inspection occurred, these conspirators mainly subverted the legal entry system by entering at airports. In doing so, they relied on a wide variety of fraudulent documents, on aliases, and on government corruption. Because terrorist operations were not suicide missions in the early to mid-1990s, once in the United States terrorists and their supporters tried to get legal immigration status that would permit them to remain here, primarily by committing serial, or repeated, immigration fraud, by claiming political asylum, and by marrying Americans. Many of these tactics would remain largely unchanged and undetected throughout the 1990s and up to the 9/11 attack.
Thus, abuse of the immigration system and a lack of interior immigration enforcement were unwittingly working together to support terrorist activity. It would remain largely unknown, since no agency of the United States government analyzed terrorist travel patterns until after 9/11. This lack of attention meant that critical opportunities to disrupt terrorist travel and, therefore, deadly terrorist operations were missed.
By analyzing information available at the time, we identified numerous entry and embedding tactics associated with these earlier attacks in the United States.
Let me repeat a critical segment of that passage from that report:
... once in the United States terrorists and their supporters tried to get legal immigration status that would permit them to remain here, primarily by committing serial, or repeated, immigration fraud, by claiming political asylum, and by marrying Americans. Many of these tactics would remain largely unchanged and undetected throughout the 1990s and up to the 9/11 attack.
Thus, abuse of the immigration system and a lack of interior immigration enforcement were unwittingly working together to support terrorist activity.
In January 1993 Amir Kansi, a citizen of Pakistan who was granted political asylum committing immigration fraud, stood outside CIA headquarters in Virginia and opened fire with an AK-47 on vehicles carrying CIA officials to work that winter morning. He killed two officials and wounded three others. He fled the United States and was subsequently brought back to the United States to stand trial for his crimes, was found guilty and was executed.
On September 1, 2006 I testified before a field hearing conducted by the House Judiciary Committee at Dubuque, Iowa entitled:
"IS THE REID-KENNEDY BILL A REPEAT OF THE FAILED AMNESTY OF 1986?"
The link to the transcript of that hearing can be found here.
During the course of my prepared testimony I discussed the issue of immigration fraud as it pertained to the Comprehensive Immigration Reform bill (S.2611) that was, at that time, being considered by the United States Senate. Here is a portion of my testimony I would like you to consider:
"..... A nation's primary responsibility is to provide for the safety and security of its citizens and yet, for reasons I cannot begin to fathom, the Members of the Senate who voted for S. 2611 are seemingly oblivious to the lessons that the disastrous amnesty of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, or IRCA, should have taught us. That piece of legislation led to the greatest influx of illegal aliens in the history of our Nation.
VOICES. We can't hear you.
Mr. CUTLER. I'm sorry. That piece of legislation led to the greatest influx of illegal aliens in the history of our Nation. Fraud and a lack of integrity of the immigration system not only flooded our Nation with illegal aliens who ran our borders, hoping that what had been billed as a one-time amnesty would be repeated, but it also enabled a number of terrorists and many criminals to enter the United States and then embed themselves in our country.
A notable example of such a terrorist can be found in a review of the facts concerning Mahmud Abouhalima, a citizen of Egypt who entered the United States on a tourist visa, overstayed his authorized period of admission and then applied for amnesty under the agricultural worker provisions of IRCA. He succeeded in obtaining resident alien status through this process. During the 5 year period he drove a cab and had his license suspended numerous times for various violations of law and he ultimately demonstrated his appreciation for our Nation's generosity by participating in the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993 that left six people dead, hundreds of people injured and an estimated one-half billion dollars in damages inflicted on that iconic, ill-fated complex. America had opened its doors to him so that he might participate in the American dream and he turned that dream into our worst nightmare. The other terrorists who attacked our Nation on subsequent attacks, including the attacks of September 11, 2001, similarly exploited our generosity, seeing our Nation's kindness, weakness, gaming the immigration system to enter our country and then hide in plain sight among us."
I would also ask you to consider that of 94 terrorists who were identified as operating in the United States in the decade before 9/11, some 59 of them used immigration fraud to either enter the United States and/or embed themselves in the United States once they entered our country.
Let me make this point as clearly as I know how. I certainly believe it is important to protect those whose claim for political asylum is legitimate. A large percentage of my family was slaughtered by the Nazis during the Second World War, including my grandmother, for whom I was named. The issue is that our government absolutely must do what is necessary to weed out the fraud in these programs. Without being able to do this essential mission, our nation's security is compromised and our citizens may well pay for this breech of security with their lives.
Today the administration is gearing up to revive Comprehensive Immigration Reform yet again. Senator Chuck Schumer has stated that he believes that since the border is now secure, it is time to enact Comprehensive Immigration Reform.
Here is my response to this madness. First of all, the border is anything but secure.
Second, and even more importantly, fraud is still a huge issue for the entire immigration benefits program. Consider how the corrupt law firm operated as noted in this quote from the article:
Supporting documents said to have been notarized in India or Romania turned out to be counterfeit, with some created on a computer in Sacramento, the government said.
If USCIS, United States Citizenship and Immigration Services is unable to address the issue of massive levels of fraud in its day to day operations today, what would happen to that beleaguered agency if suddenly they had to cope with an additional ten million, twenty million or even thirty million amnesty applications that would be dumped on the desks of the overworked bureaucrats at that agency?
Consider how easy it is to create bogus supporting documents. Now consider that because we are talking about aliens who have no reliable way of proving evidence about their true identities or their actual dates of entry into the United States, what would prevent a terrorist or criminal from providing false supporting documents that created an entirely new identity for him and provided "proof" that he (she) had been residing in the United States for many years even if he had entered the United States only days earlier?
I can definitively tell you that nothing could be realistically done to prevent this. The 2007 Comprehensive Immigration Reform bill would have required USCIS to adjudicate a minimum of 100,000 applications for amnesty each and every day, in addition to handling all of that agencies "regular" work!
The adjudicators would, of necessity, be forced to operate as Lucy did in that hilarious episode of I Love Lucy when she and her friend, Ethel, worked at a bonbon factory, trying to wrap candy that hurtled at them on a conveyor belt that was cranked up to warp speed. Except, this would not be a laughing matter!
I oppose a massive amnesty program for millions of illegal aliens who have violated our nation's borders and immigration laws for many reasons, but let us focus on the issue of whether or not our inept agencies could even administer such a program. The answer is simple: NO!
To expect USCIS to deal with such a massive program would be as realistic as expecting a 90 year old man on life support to run the New York City Marathon!
Meanwhile it will be interesting to see if USCIS has the moral fiber and intestinal fortitude to attempt to identify all of the clients of the crooked law firm and then revisit the applications that these clients filed to see how many of them committed fraud.
If USCIS was really concerned about the issue of the integrity of the process, they would be seeking to identify and remove aliens who game the immigration system. I would love to know how many aliens are arrested and deported each year for committing immigration fraud.
By the way, I have been told that USCIS processes more than some 6 million applications for various immigration benefits including the conferring of resident alien status and United States citizenship upon aliens via the naturalization process. They have fewer than 700 investigators to attempt to restore a semblance of integrity to the system.
Consider the odds. You would probably face a greater threat of getting hit by a snowball at the beach in August than an alien has of being found to have committed immigration fraud and then being arrested and deported!
The safety of our nation begins at its borders but it does not end there. It is therefore essential that not only must our borders be secured, but that our immigration bureaucracy honor those who abide by the laws and seeks to weed out those who would commit fraud and those who would assist them.
An amnesty program aka Comprehensive Immigration Reform is one of the most dangerous programs our country could possibly implement. In my judgement, it could easily become a suicide pact given the reality of the way that such a program would be administered.
We the People must not sit by passively and allow this madness to be foisted upon us and our nation. We the People must take our First Amendment rights seriously and make it our business to have our voices heard by those who purport to represent us!
Good citizenship does not end at the voting booth, it simply begins there. In order for our representative democracy to represent us, we need to communicate with our elected representatives to let them know in clear and unequivocal terms what we want.
I implore you to get involved! Please make this your New Year's Resolution!
Michael W. Cutler graduated from Brooklyn College of the City University of New York in 1971 with a B.A. in Communications Arts and Sciences. Mr. Cutler began working for the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) in October 1971 when he entered on duty as an Immigration Inspector assigned to John F. Kennedy International Airport. In August 1975 he became a Criminal Investigator (Special Agent) for the INS at NYC.
He rotated through virtually every squad in the Investigations Branch. From 1988 until 1991 he was assigned as the INS representative to the Unified Intelligence Division (UID) of the DEA in New York. In 1991 he was promoted to the position of Senior Special Agent and was assigned to the Organized Crime, Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF) which required that he work with members of other law enforcement agencies including the FBI, DEA, ATF, U.S. Customs and local and state police as well as law enforcement organizations of other countries including Israel, Canada, Great Britain and Japan, to conduct investigations of aliens involved in major drug trafficking organizations. He retired from the INS in February 2002, after a career that spanned some 30 years.
Finally, Michael Cutler has appeared on numerous television and radio programs including Lou Dobbs, Fox News, MSNBC and many other television and radio news-oriented programs to discuss the enforcement of immigration laws.
E-Mail: mcutler007@aol.com
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