Um, About That Homeland Security
It’s still pretty much in shambles, despite the recently delivered double-tap to Osama.
Recall that five of the 9-11 hijackers were in the United States on overstayed visas and read with a shudder the latest revelation from within the bowels of the Department of Homeland Security. This from Reuters:
U.S. authorities are facing a huge backlog of records involving people who have stayed in the United States after their visas expired, according to a report released on Tuesday, revealing that a security gap has not been fixed since the September 11, 2001 attacks.
The Department of Homeland Security’s US-VISIT system had a backlog of some 1.6 million records of potential visa overstays as of January 2011, said the report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, Congress’ investigative arm.
Five of the 19 men who hijacked the planes in the September 11 attacks had overstayed their visas and the report found that some 36 of the 400 people who have been convicted on terrorism-related charges since 2001 had also stayed after their visas expired.
“It is simply unacceptable that we are still unable to systematically identify people who overstay — some of whom may be terrorists waiting to attack innocent Americans,” Joe Lieberman, an Independent who is chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, said in a statement.
But, hey, we got Osama; so everything’s cool, right.
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