May 13, 2009
FairUS.org
A report by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and a separate academic study conclude that the points of entry along the U.S. border and unsecured porous border continue to pose a threat from terrorists who may seek to exploit border security weaknesses. They also serve as a reminder that significant changes are needed to address this risk.
On Wednesday, May 6, FBI Inspector General Glenn A. Fine released a report detailing what his office perceived to be flaws in the FBI's terrorist watch list, which the FBI developed in the wake of September 11, 2001. Law enforcement created the list, which is composed of data received from several federal agencies, to track known international threats. (FBI Report, May 2009; and FBI Press Release, May 6, 2009). Federal agencies that collect and supply data for the list do not follow uniform reporting standards which, the report notes, has resulted in tens of thousands of names being improperly added to the list while other names are not removed long after an investigation had closed.
The report indicates, however, that some potential terrorists were added to the list too slowly, which resulted in these potential terrorists being able to travel to and from the United States at will. Inspector General Fine said that problems with the list - which contained 400,000 names, not including known aliases, as of September 2008 - have "create[d] a risk to national security." FBI Assistant Director John Miller indicated that the FBI was working to correct these problems by embracing each of the report's recommendations. (The New York Times, May 6, 2009; and The Washington Post, May 7, 2009).
America's security threats are not just limited to known threats who may chose to enter America through the nation's ports of entry but, as researchers from Stanford University and George Mason University concluded earlier this year, significant threats also persist as a consequence of illegal border crossings across the porous U.S.-Mexican border. The researchers put together what may be the first mathematical model predicting the likelihood of terrorist infiltration across the United States' shared border with Mexico. (Society for Risk Analysis, May 2009). Lawrence Wein and Arik Motskin, of Stanford, and Yifan Liu, of George Mason, used previously compiled statistical data and mathematical models to analyze the flow of persons across the U.S.-Mexico border, which is the more heavily trafficked of the United States' two international borders. The authors concluded that the odds of a non-Mexican terrorist utilizing current border conditions to enter the United States are fairly high.
One calculation, based upon several assumptions about the degree of border screening and other aspects of domestic interior enforcement, determined that the probability of a non-Mexican terrorist crossing into the United States was 97.3%. That probability increased, to 98.9%, if attempts were made to detain all illegal aliens of Mexican origin without any structural changes to the current apprehension and removal process (p. 8). The study concluded that minor shifts in border policy would not drastically reduce the likelihood of non-Mexican terrorist infiltration across the U.S.-Mexico border and that significant reductions in the probability of terrorist infiltration would be possible only with increases in funding for the agencies that deal with immigration and border enforcement (p. 9).
Federation for American Immigration Reform, FairUS.org, FAIR believes America can and must have an immigration policy that is nondiscriminatory and is designed to serve the social, economic and environmental needs of our country. It is a policy that all recent polls show has the overwhelming support of the American public.
