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(Source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB113072652621883932.html)
subsciption required to read the article but i am posting it here!
By BARRY NEWMAN
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
October 31, 2005; Page A1
Driving in from Mexico last March, Jaime Correa was stopped by federal
inspectors at a border post near San Diego. They fed the 21-year-old
U.S. citizen's name into a computer with a fast link to the federal
government's huge database of criminal files. Readout: Wanted in Los
Angeles for attempted murder.
Another citizen, Issah Samori, walked into a federal office in Chicago
the previous year. He is 60, a cabbie, and was there to help his wife
get a green card. An immigration clerk fed his name into the same
computer. Readout: Wanted in Indiana for speeding.
The border guards handed Mr. Correa over to the San Diego police, who
locked him up. The Chicago police came to collect Mr. Samori. He spent
the night on a concrete slab in a precinct cell.
Detentions of American citizens by immigration authorities for offenses
large and small are becoming routine -- and have begun to stir a debate
over the appropriate use of the latest technologies in the war on
terror. Since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, immigration computers have
been hooked up to the expanding database of criminal records and
terrorist watch lists maintained by the Federal Bureau of
Investigation. The computers are now in use at all airports, most
border crossings, and even in domestic immigration offices, where
clerks decide on applications for permanent residence and citizenship.
The screenings are mainly meant to trap foreigners, and especially
foreign terrorists, but they have also proved to be a tool in the hunt
for American citizens wanted by the police. In 2003, U.S. Customs and
Border Protection says that it alone caught 4,555 Americans this way.
In 2004, the number rose to 6,189.
Some law enforcers applaud that tally. Citizens with nothing to hide,
they argue, shouldn't care if their names are put through a criminal
search, and criminals should have no "expectation of privacy." The
arrests have brought in some serious offenders, like Mr. Correa, a Los
Angeles gang member, who was accused of a drive-by shooting. He was
convicted this month of assault with a firearm, and sentenced to eight
years in prison. There have been others like him: citizens wanted for
armed robbery, murder and sex crimes.
But some legal scholars and defenders of privacy worry that easy access
to criminal databases is giving rise to indiscriminate detentions of
citizens for minor offenses, and to a "mission creep" that is blurring
the line between immigration control and crime control. Routine
encounters like Mr. Samori's, some say, shouldn't give civil servants a
"free shot" to fish for records unrelated to the administrative purpose
at hand.
It isn't as if those the computer snags are being "pulled over for a
broken tail-light," says former Atlanta policeman Mark Harrold, who
teaches law at the University of Mississippi. Rather, as he sees it,
they are being caught as they engage in civil pursuits "like going in
for a marriage license."
Born in Ghana, Mr. Samori has lived for 35 years in a brick house on
Chicago's South Side. When he and his new Ghanaian wife, Hilda, sat
down in an immigration clerk's cubicle in mid-2004, Mr. Samori knew
that as a citizen he had a right to sponsor her for permanent
residence. The two came ready to show that their marriage was genuine.
But the clerk just stared at his computer.
"He said we can't do the interview," Mr. Samori recalls. "I asked why.
He said, because we have an arrest warrant on you. I told him, whatever
it is, I'm ready to face it."
The clerk reached for his phone. Two officers appeared. Hilda Samori
cried as her husband was led out. He spent three nights in jail on his
way to Indiana court, where his reckless-driving charge, a misdemeanor,
was eventually set aside. Mrs. Samori had to wait a year and a half for
her green-card application to be reopened.
Immigration service officials say reporting wanted citizens has become
standard procedure. "If you have unfinished business with the police,
it's best to take care of that before you come in asking for a service
or a benefit," says Christopher Bentley, a spokesman for U.S.
Citizenship and Immigration Services, the border-protection agency's
domestic sister. Apart from confirming a citizen sponsor's identity, he
says, clerks search for warrants to make sure that no one on federal
property poses "a threat to public safety or national security."
On the borders, the same principles have long applied. Like the
immigration service, the border agency now belongs to the Department of
Homeland Security. Border inspectors, who wear uniforms and carry guns,
are the first line of defense against terrorists, drug smugglers and
illegal immigrants trying to enter the U.S. When they face suspicious
people -- mostly with dubious documents -- they used to hold them for
long security checks. Today, border inspectors need only swipe
passports through readers for warrants and watch lists to pop up.
Millions of citizens returning from abroad now have their names scanned
this way.
Behind the new dragnet is the FBI's National Crime Information Center,
a repository of 40 million records covering everything from terrorists
to stolen boats. On a single day in 2005 -- May 28 -- the center
handled a record 5.3 million queries. Its biggest user now, with 1.5
million daily searches, is Customs and Border Protection.
"There was authority before 9/11 to stop people, but the software makes
it easier than ever," says Jeffrey Lustick, a lawyer in Bellingham,
Wash., a town near the Canadian border where these arrests are
commonplace. "What was theoretical has become real."
The same FBI database is also available now to clerks who carry out the
duties of the old Immigration and Naturalization Service. Each year,
the clerks, who wear street clothes and sit behind a desk, evaluate
over a million applications for citizenship and permanent residence,
most sponsored by green-card holders and citizens. While clerks at
other federal agencies rarely have reason to see FBI files, the
immigration-service's clerks do.
Because lawbreaking can disqualify applicants, all must submit to
fingerprinting and a full criminal-history check. The job used to be
done by hand with the FBI's help. Now fingerprints have gone digital,
and immigration clerks can hunt for applicants by name on the FBI
warrants list. Citizen sponsors aren't fingerprinted, but "in the
course of doing our business," says Mr. Bentley, their names are
checked against the warrants list as well.
"When an individual comes into our office," he adds, "if there's an
outstanding warrant, we will call local law enforcement and let them
know the person's here."
The policy hasn't been announced, but immigration lawyers around the
country say they have slowly been made aware of it over the past two or
three years -- often by surprise.
Paul Zoltan, a Dallas immigration lawyer, says his foreign client's
citizen wife was arrested in 2003 at her marriage interview and charged
with shoplifting. "My trust in your office has been deeply shaken," the
lawyer wrote the immigration service, complaining that the arrest had
nothing to do with the immigration service's job. He got no reply, and
the service has no comment. A citizen husband at an interview in
Chicago was held for hours on a Georgia cocaine-possession warrant,
says his wife's lawyer, Rebecca Reyes. The warrant was "years old," she
says. Georgia wasn't interested; the husband was released.
Jim Austin watched as his client's citizen wife was arrested for
trespassing in Kansas City, Mo. Rebecca White took her foreign client's
two children into a bathroom in Seattle so they wouldn't see their
citizen father taken away; the charge was failure to return household
rental equipment. Also in Seattle, a citizen sponsoring his wife's
application was jailed overnight on a warrant for someone else.
"They apologized," says Diana Moller, a lawyer who represented the
wife, explaining why the man preferred not to give an interview. "He
wants to leave it at that."
Arrests of this kind have become common enough that many lawyers now
quiz citizens about warrants before sending them into immigration
interviews. The service doesn't count the citizens it arrests; if any
dangerous criminals have been among them, it can't say.
Customs and Border Protection can. When it nets citizens on their way
into the country who are wanted for serious crimes, it puts out press
releases. Two standouts from the Mexican border: a man from North
Carolina wanted for multiple sex crimes against children in Arizona and
Massachusetts; and a young couple on the run from Colorado, both wanted
for committing a double murder. And one from the Canadian border: an
escaped robber from Seattle driving a stolen car with a shotgun in the
trunk and an Uzi in his luggage.
"This technology is a fast, effective weapon in the war on terror," one
announcement quotes the agency's chief, Robert C. Bonner, as saying,
"but also gives our agents a means to apprehend criminals and fugitives
of every kind."
At airports, the border agency's screening for fugitives has become
still more efficient with the passage of a new antiterror law requiring
flights from overseas to transmit passenger lists before landing. Now,
inspectors can organize welcoming parties in advance.
"They're surprised, let me tell you," says a former inspector at Los
Angeles Airport who asked not to be named. Often, his warrants were for
Las Vegas gambling debts. "Couples come back from Canc?d the
husband has to explain. The wife says, 'Why didn't you tell me?' I've
seen tears. I've seen breakdowns."
In 2003, the Transportation Security Administration, also part of
Homeland Security, floated the idea of screening all passengers for
warrants, citizens included, before they board domestic flights. The
TSA's goal was to "ensure that passengers do not sit next to known
terrorists and wanted murderers." After an outcry across the board --
from the American Civil Liberties Union to the American Conservative
Union -- it backed off, and now is rolling out a system that limits
such searches to terrorist-watch lists.
At the immigration service, the authority to run checks on citizens
dates back to at least 2002, the service says in a statement. That's
when the FBI granted the old INS access to "certain" files "for the
purpose of adjudicating immigration-benefit applications." The new
service says it derives limited access to files on citizens from that
deal with the FBI.
The arrangement comes as news to legal experts and law-enforcement
officials, including Judson Barce, the prosecutor in Benton County,
Ind. "A civil authority ran a criminal check?" he says. "How do they do
that?"
It was thanks to the search run by a Chicago immigration clerk that Mr.
Barce was able to bring Issah Samori to justice.
As soon as the clerk said the word "warrant," Mr. Samori guessed what
it was about. Six months earlier, on a Sunday drive to visit a
relative, he was heading south in his Camry on a state highway when a
Benton County police car pulled him over.
The patrolman said Mr. Samori had hit 86 miles per hour in a 55 mph
zone, fast enough to be reckless in Benton. Mr. Samori says he called
the county to get a court date, but no appointment letter ever reached
his house. That was the last he thought about the ticket until he and
his wife went in for their marriage interview.
After the immigration clerk found the warrant Benton County issued
because Mr. Samori had missed his court date, he spent two nights in
Chicago-area jails. Then Benton's sheriff arrived to drive him, in
handcuffs, 70 miles to Indiana, where Mr. Samori spent his third night
in a cell.
In court the next day, he didn't contest the charge. "I just wanted to
get it over," he says. In return for a $400 bond, he was set free. He
returned a month later with proof that he had taken a defensive-driving
course. The reckless-driving charge was dismissed. Less the sheriff's
expenses for driving down from Chicago, he got a refund of $203.98.
At the end of July, after an 18-month pause, the Samoris sat down once
again at a clerk's desk in Chicago's federal building to complete their
green-card interview. They brought a pile of papers and an album of
wedding pictures to prove their marriage is real. They are still
waiting for the immigration service to make its decision.
subsciption required to read the article but i am posting it here!
By BARRY NEWMAN
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
October 31, 2005; Page A1
Driving in from Mexico last March, Jaime Correa was stopped by federal
inspectors at a border post near San Diego. They fed the 21-year-old
U.S. citizen's name into a computer with a fast link to the federal
government's huge database of criminal files. Readout: Wanted in Los
Angeles for attempted murder.
Another citizen, Issah Samori, walked into a federal office in Chicago
the previous year. He is 60, a cabbie, and was there to help his wife
get a green card. An immigration clerk fed his name into the same
computer. Readout: Wanted in Indiana for speeding.
The border guards handed Mr. Correa over to the San Diego police, who
locked him up. The Chicago police came to collect Mr. Samori. He spent
the night on a concrete slab in a precinct cell.
Detentions of American citizens by immigration authorities for offenses
large and small are becoming routine -- and have begun to stir a debate
over the appropriate use of the latest technologies in the war on
terror. Since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, immigration computers have
been hooked up to the expanding database of criminal records and
terrorist watch lists maintained by the Federal Bureau of
Investigation. The computers are now in use at all airports, most
border crossings, and even in domestic immigration offices, where
clerks decide on applications for permanent residence and citizenship.
The screenings are mainly meant to trap foreigners, and especially
foreign terrorists, but they have also proved to be a tool in the hunt
for American citizens wanted by the police. In 2003, U.S. Customs and
Border Protection says that it alone caught 4,555 Americans this way.
In 2004, the number rose to 6,189.
Some law enforcers applaud that tally. Citizens with nothing to hide,
they argue, shouldn't care if their names are put through a criminal
search, and criminals should have no "expectation of privacy." The
arrests have brought in some serious offenders, like Mr. Correa, a Los
Angeles gang member, who was accused of a drive-by shooting. He was
convicted this month of assault with a firearm, and sentenced to eight
years in prison. There have been others like him: citizens wanted for
armed robbery, murder and sex crimes.
But some legal scholars and defenders of privacy worry that easy access
to criminal databases is giving rise to indiscriminate detentions of
citizens for minor offenses, and to a "mission creep" that is blurring
the line between immigration control and crime control. Routine
encounters like Mr. Samori's, some say, shouldn't give civil servants a
"free shot" to fish for records unrelated to the administrative purpose
at hand.
It isn't as if those the computer snags are being "pulled over for a
broken tail-light," says former Atlanta policeman Mark Harrold, who
teaches law at the University of Mississippi. Rather, as he sees it,
they are being caught as they engage in civil pursuits "like going in
for a marriage license."
Born in Ghana, Mr. Samori has lived for 35 years in a brick house on
Chicago's South Side. When he and his new Ghanaian wife, Hilda, sat
down in an immigration clerk's cubicle in mid-2004, Mr. Samori knew
that as a citizen he had a right to sponsor her for permanent
residence. The two came ready to show that their marriage was genuine.
But the clerk just stared at his computer.
"He said we can't do the interview," Mr. Samori recalls. "I asked why.
He said, because we have an arrest warrant on you. I told him, whatever
it is, I'm ready to face it."
The clerk reached for his phone. Two officers appeared. Hilda Samori
cried as her husband was led out. He spent three nights in jail on his
way to Indiana court, where his reckless-driving charge, a misdemeanor,
was eventually set aside. Mrs. Samori had to wait a year and a half for
her green-card application to be reopened.
Immigration service officials say reporting wanted citizens has become
standard procedure. "If you have unfinished business with the police,
it's best to take care of that before you come in asking for a service
or a benefit," says Christopher Bentley, a spokesman for U.S.
Citizenship and Immigration Services, the border-protection agency's
domestic sister. Apart from confirming a citizen sponsor's identity, he
says, clerks search for warrants to make sure that no one on federal
property poses "a threat to public safety or national security."
On the borders, the same principles have long applied. Like the
immigration service, the border agency now belongs to the Department of
Homeland Security. Border inspectors, who wear uniforms and carry guns,
are the first line of defense against terrorists, drug smugglers and
illegal immigrants trying to enter the U.S. When they face suspicious
people -- mostly with dubious documents -- they used to hold them for
long security checks. Today, border inspectors need only swipe
passports through readers for warrants and watch lists to pop up.
Millions of citizens returning from abroad now have their names scanned
this way.
Behind the new dragnet is the FBI's National Crime Information Center,
a repository of 40 million records covering everything from terrorists
to stolen boats. On a single day in 2005 -- May 28 -- the center
handled a record 5.3 million queries. Its biggest user now, with 1.5
million daily searches, is Customs and Border Protection.
"There was authority before 9/11 to stop people, but the software makes
it easier than ever," says Jeffrey Lustick, a lawyer in Bellingham,
Wash., a town near the Canadian border where these arrests are
commonplace. "What was theoretical has become real."
The same FBI database is also available now to clerks who carry out the
duties of the old Immigration and Naturalization Service. Each year,
the clerks, who wear street clothes and sit behind a desk, evaluate
over a million applications for citizenship and permanent residence,
most sponsored by green-card holders and citizens. While clerks at
other federal agencies rarely have reason to see FBI files, the
immigration-service's clerks do.
Because lawbreaking can disqualify applicants, all must submit to
fingerprinting and a full criminal-history check. The job used to be
done by hand with the FBI's help. Now fingerprints have gone digital,
and immigration clerks can hunt for applicants by name on the FBI
warrants list. Citizen sponsors aren't fingerprinted, but "in the
course of doing our business," says Mr. Bentley, their names are
checked against the warrants list as well.
"When an individual comes into our office," he adds, "if there's an
outstanding warrant, we will call local law enforcement and let them
know the person's here."
The policy hasn't been announced, but immigration lawyers around the
country say they have slowly been made aware of it over the past two or
three years -- often by surprise.
Paul Zoltan, a Dallas immigration lawyer, says his foreign client's
citizen wife was arrested in 2003 at her marriage interview and charged
with shoplifting. "My trust in your office has been deeply shaken," the
lawyer wrote the immigration service, complaining that the arrest had
nothing to do with the immigration service's job. He got no reply, and
the service has no comment. A citizen husband at an interview in
Chicago was held for hours on a Georgia cocaine-possession warrant,
says his wife's lawyer, Rebecca Reyes. The warrant was "years old," she
says. Georgia wasn't interested; the husband was released.
Jim Austin watched as his client's citizen wife was arrested for
trespassing in Kansas City, Mo. Rebecca White took her foreign client's
two children into a bathroom in Seattle so they wouldn't see their
citizen father taken away; the charge was failure to return household
rental equipment. Also in Seattle, a citizen sponsoring his wife's
application was jailed overnight on a warrant for someone else.
"They apologized," says Diana Moller, a lawyer who represented the
wife, explaining why the man preferred not to give an interview. "He
wants to leave it at that."
Arrests of this kind have become common enough that many lawyers now
quiz citizens about warrants before sending them into immigration
interviews. The service doesn't count the citizens it arrests; if any
dangerous criminals have been among them, it can't say.
Customs and Border Protection can. When it nets citizens on their way
into the country who are wanted for serious crimes, it puts out press
releases. Two standouts from the Mexican border: a man from North
Carolina wanted for multiple sex crimes against children in Arizona and
Massachusetts; and a young couple on the run from Colorado, both wanted
for committing a double murder. And one from the Canadian border: an
escaped robber from Seattle driving a stolen car with a shotgun in the
trunk and an Uzi in his luggage.
"This technology is a fast, effective weapon in the war on terror," one
announcement quotes the agency's chief, Robert C. Bonner, as saying,
"but also gives our agents a means to apprehend criminals and fugitives
of every kind."
At airports, the border agency's screening for fugitives has become
still more efficient with the passage of a new antiterror law requiring
flights from overseas to transmit passenger lists before landing. Now,
inspectors can organize welcoming parties in advance.
"They're surprised, let me tell you," says a former inspector at Los
Angeles Airport who asked not to be named. Often, his warrants were for
Las Vegas gambling debts. "Couples come back from Canc?d the
husband has to explain. The wife says, 'Why didn't you tell me?' I've
seen tears. I've seen breakdowns."
In 2003, the Transportation Security Administration, also part of
Homeland Security, floated the idea of screening all passengers for
warrants, citizens included, before they board domestic flights. The
TSA's goal was to "ensure that passengers do not sit next to known
terrorists and wanted murderers." After an outcry across the board --
from the American Civil Liberties Union to the American Conservative
Union -- it backed off, and now is rolling out a system that limits
such searches to terrorist-watch lists.
At the immigration service, the authority to run checks on citizens
dates back to at least 2002, the service says in a statement. That's
when the FBI granted the old INS access to "certain" files "for the
purpose of adjudicating immigration-benefit applications." The new
service says it derives limited access to files on citizens from that
deal with the FBI.
The arrangement comes as news to legal experts and law-enforcement
officials, including Judson Barce, the prosecutor in Benton County,
Ind. "A civil authority ran a criminal check?" he says. "How do they do
that?"
It was thanks to the search run by a Chicago immigration clerk that Mr.
Barce was able to bring Issah Samori to justice.
As soon as the clerk said the word "warrant," Mr. Samori guessed what
it was about. Six months earlier, on a Sunday drive to visit a
relative, he was heading south in his Camry on a state highway when a
Benton County police car pulled him over.
The patrolman said Mr. Samori had hit 86 miles per hour in a 55 mph
zone, fast enough to be reckless in Benton. Mr. Samori says he called
the county to get a court date, but no appointment letter ever reached
his house. That was the last he thought about the ticket until he and
his wife went in for their marriage interview.
After the immigration clerk found the warrant Benton County issued
because Mr. Samori had missed his court date, he spent two nights in
Chicago-area jails. Then Benton's sheriff arrived to drive him, in
handcuffs, 70 miles to Indiana, where Mr. Samori spent his third night
in a cell.
In court the next day, he didn't contest the charge. "I just wanted to
get it over," he says. In return for a $400 bond, he was set free. He
returned a month later with proof that he had taken a defensive-driving
course. The reckless-driving charge was dismissed. Less the sheriff's
expenses for driving down from Chicago, he got a refund of $203.98.
At the end of July, after an 18-month pause, the Samoris sat down once
again at a clerk's desk in Chicago's federal building to complete their
green-card interview. They brought a pile of papers and an album of
wedding pictures to prove their marriage is real. They are still
waiting for the immigration service to make its decision.
