US Borders: More Leaks Than a White House Staff Meeting

Just in case you were starting to feel safe:

Chronic delays in the integration of FBI fingerprint files
with databases used by the Border Patrol leave the United States
vulnerable to entry by foreign criminals and terrorists, Justice
Department investigators found Tuesday. Glenn A. Fine, the Justice
Department inspector general, said the latest projections are that the two systems won't be combined and automated to check every illegal alien until at least 2008,
nearly two years behind the original schedule. Until then, overworked
Border Patrol agents must pick and choose which illegal aliens
apprehended at U.S. borders to run through FBI databases that contain
some 43 million ten-finger sets of prints of known criminals. That
means some will slip through the cracks, possibly to commit more
crimes, Fine said.
The report focused on the case of Victor Manual Batres, who was stopped
by Border Patrol agents twice in January 2002 but each time was
returned to Mexico without having his fingerprints run through the FBI
files. Had the agents done so, they would have discovered he had a long
criminal history and could have turned him over to federal prosecutors.
Instead, Batres made it across the U.S.-Mexico border illegally a third
time later in 2002, making his way to Klamath Falls, Oregon, where he
raped two Roman Catholic nuns and killed one of them, 53-year-old
Sister Helen Lynn Chaska. Batres is now serving a life sentence after
pleading guilty to murder and rape.

As I read this article, I couldn't help but notice that over in the sidebar CNN.com had the following article (and ONLY this article) listed under "Related Stories":

Bush: America making progress in terror war
America is "breathing down" the necks of terrorists and will never
relent, President Bush said Tuesday, marking the anniversary of the
Homeland Security Department. In a speech to some 200 department
employees, Bush said the United States was cutting off the terrorists'
money supply, chasing down terrorists leaders and disrupting their
networks. This came amid claims that while the administration is more
aware of threats, it is not doing enough about them. "We are
relentless," Bush said, adding that two-thirds of the key leaders of
the al-Qaeda terrorist network have been captured or killed. "We are
strong. We refuse to yield. The rest of them hear us breathing down
their neck. We're after them. We will not relent. We will bring these
killers to justice."

We will bring these killers to justice... by 2008. Maybe that's going
to be his reelection platform. God knows he doesn't have much else.

Posted by flow Frazao on March 2, 2004 at 04:43 PM | Permalink