Ever just feel like screaming? Well, we should all scream. Now.
[size=4]Four Pakistanis Missing After INS Wrongly Let Them Enter U.S.[/size=4]
Saturday, March 23, 2002, By Carl Cameron
WASHINGTON — Federal officials are on the lookout for four Pakistani nationals who are in the United States illegally after leaving a freighter that had been docked in Virginia sometime last weekend.
Immigration and Naturalization Service district directors and border patrol chiefs from across the country met on a "crisis management" conference call Thursday afternoon in which it was reportedly revealed that one of the four missing Pakistanis showed up on a "lookout list." Since then, however, checks run on the Pakistanis suggest that they are on no such lists.
Some members on Capitol Hill who have heard about the case are "furious," according to sources, and the embarrassment is said to have further angered President Bush, who was put in another awkward situation last week when the INS mailed visa approvals for two Sept. 11 hijackers to the flight school they attended last year.
[b]The latest incident prompted INS Commissioner James W. Ziglar to issue a memo to INS regional and district directors Friday evening warning that, effective immediately, he is "implementing a zero tolerance policy with regard to INS employees who fail to abide by headquarters-issued policy and field instructions."[/b]
[b][ETH Note: Just NOW such a zero-tolerance policy has been issued?][/b]
[b]"The days of looking the other way are over," he wrote.[/b] [b][ETH Note: ][/b]
The Coast Guard is distributing fliers in the Norfolk, Va., area of the missing crew members: Ahmad Salman, Thulan Qadar, Mohammad Nazir and Adnan Ahmad.
They were onboard the Progresso, a Malta-chartered freighter that was carrying a chemical commonly used in fertilizer, when it made port a week ago Friday near Norfolk from Novorossisk, Russia.
The ship has a 27-member crew; 19 are Pakistani. The captain is Croatian.
Last Friday, an INS inspector granted the four Pakistanis "shore leave visa waivers," which allowed them to come ashore even though they had not been granted visas for entry into the United States.
A list of crewmen was sent to INS a day before the ship arrived in Norfolk and INS screened the names. One of the missing crewmen had withdrawn a visa application to work on another ship several years ago in Chicago. That should have shown up when the man's name was checked on INS databases, [u]but the agent entered the wrong birthday[/u], a Justice Department official said.
The mistake was found after INS officials re-entered the information for the four men. The application withdrawal would not have prevented the man from getting the waiver, INS officials said.
One of the officials added, "None of them came up with anything terror- or criminal-related."
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