A band of 14 illegal alien Syrians?!
WNBC investigative reporter Scott Weinberger reported on Joe Scarborough’s MSNBC show tonight that the 14 Syrians on Northwest Flight 327 ALL had expired visas. He said his sources told him that law enforcement officials xeroxed the men’s paperwork without looking at the dates. The visas had expired nearly a month earlier, according to Weinberger.
This does not give me much confidence in the background checks that the Joint Terrorism Task Force, FBI, and LAPD may or may not have conducted on the men before letting them walk away. Would you trust the terrorism investigation of officials who apparently neglected to verify whether these men–coming from a designated state sponsor of terrorism, flying on a day on which Department of Homeland Security officials had issued a warning about a possible terrorist attack–WERE EVEN IN THE COUNTRY LEGALLY?!?!?!
If Weinberger’s reporting is accurate, I won’t be surprised. The 14 men join a club of at least an estimated 2.3 million illegal visa overstayers currently living in the U.S. today. Until September 11, 2001, the Visa Overstayers Club also included “student” Hani Hanjour and “businessmen and tourist” Nawaf al-Hazmi and Satam al-Suqami.
Flashback: On Scarborough Country (July 19, 2004), former FBI chief of counterterrorism, Steve Pomerantz, commented on the FBI’s investigation of the Syrian band members:
I am struck by the fact that the FBI did turn out. There seemed to be an appropriate and proper response, and they did what sounds to me like a very thorough, exhaustive investigation, during the course of which nobody was charged with a crime, nobody was even detained, which tells me that these people were here legally, legitimately, had official and appropriate and proper documentation, because, as you know, for the last few years in particular, the FBI has not been reluctant to detain people who are here in any way illegally, whether they’re out of status, or whether they have false documentation. That didn’t happen in this case.
Update: Avert your eyes if you are allergic, but some immigration law wonkery is necessary here. Some readers have technical questions for Scott Weinberger. For example:
[A]s you must surely know, just because a person’s visa has expired doesn’t mean they are “out of status.” A person is deemed to have “overstayed” when they have exceeded the time allowed him or her to stay in the U.S. by DHS/ICE. This time is put on the alien’s I-94 card when they enter the U.S. In fact, if the Syrian musicians entered the U.S. on P-1 visas, as I suspect, the visa, i.e., the stamp in their passport issued by the U.S. Consulate, would have expired the instant it was used. Syrian P-1 visas can only be issued for a single entry…And even if they entered with B-2 visas, which can be issued to Syrians with more than one entry, just because the visa itself has expired doesn’t mean they’ve overstayed. To determine whether the Syrians overstayed we’d have to see their I-94 cards.
Right. In lay parlance, partly because of journalists and politicians trying to avoid bureaucratese, “overstaying a visa” is commonly used interchangeably with overstaying the authorized “duration of stay.” I assumed that Weinberger meant the latter and have put in a call asking him for clarification. (See more here for a tutorial on what a visa is and how the visa expiration date differs from the duration of stay date or status determined by DHS at port of entry.)
Update: Still no word back from Scott Weinberger. Meantime, these comments from reader BorderAgent are on point:
Musicians typically have a P-1 visa and without a doubt a Syrian, entering on a P-1 visa would only be allowed a single entry on that visa and the visa would then expire immediately upon entry. The Visa only allows them to enter, while the I-94 allows them to stay here for the duration, whatever that might be, of the I-94.
As Michelle said earlier, in lay parlance, “overstaying a visa” could also mean having an expired I-94. But even then it would not necessarily make them an overstay. You see, you can actually apply for an extension of your I-94 while you are here at an inland office with BCIS. And the funny thing is, when you apply for an extension you are legally allowed to stay, even if you documents expire, until you receive a response, which generally takes longer than 45 days. So basically, you can automatically extend your stay for up to 45 days if you merely receive a peice of paper saying that you are waiting for a response.
Hope that helps clear some things up. A good rule of thumb when dealing with the old INS, now the DHS, is to remember that we have the most strict laws of any agency but have a waiver for everything.
Yeah, that last sentence pretty much sums up our entire immigration (non) policy: A waiver for everything.
Update: From KFI’s Eric Leonard: Air Marshals Say Passenger Overreacted. Excerpt:
FBI agents met the plane when it landed in Los Angeles and the men were questioned, and Los Angeles field office spokeswoman Cathy Viray said it’s significant the alarm on the flight came from a passenger.
“We have to take all calls seriously, but the passenger was worried, not the flight crew or the federal air marshals,” she said. “The complaint did not stem from the flight crew.”
Too bad the flight crew has been barred from confirming this.
Update: Daniel Drezner and Donald Sensing weigh in.
See what others have said
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Categories: Airline Security, Annie Jacobsen, Immigration
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a nation on the list of terrorist nations that we cannot visit.
Someone wrote this . . . since when is Syria a place that Americans cannot visit?
Hundredmiles: “I’m pretty unhappy with Annie Jacobsen. This kind of sloppy reporting makes those of us with legitimate concerns about unsecure borders and airspace look bad”
Was she supposed to be psychic? The return of the pre-9/11/01 complacency is really scaring me.
“…since when is Syria a place that Americans cannot visit?”
Since never.
Our passports are invalid for use in Libya, Iran and North Korea.
(An exception to the Iran rule is if your name is Dick Cheney and you work for the Halliburton Corporation which has a $70MM/year contract to perform oil services in Iran…)
Arabs is scary!
Great post above, kdeweb; I concur 150%.
We need to get over the fear of political correctness. It’s not worth dying for.
I know that, LA, I was being sarcastic.
No one told me Americans couldn’t go to Syria the last three times I went there had had the time of my life!
Yeah…wouldja just let this “story” die already??
“AIR MARSHALS SAY PASSENGER OVERREACTED
LOS ANGELES | July 22, 2004 – Undercover federal air marshals on board a June 29 Northwest airlines flight from Detroit to LAX identified themselves after a passenger, “overreacted,” to a group of middle-eastern men on board, federal officials and sources have told KFI NEWS.”
http://www.kfi640.com/ericleonard.html
Great. Somewhere in the depths of Tora Bora, crazed jihadi psychopaths are taking tuba & accordion lessons.
Accordind to David Adams, spokesman for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcements Federal Air Martial Service, officers were on board and checked the bathrooms several times during the flight, but nothing was found. “The FAMS never broke their cover, but “monitored” the activity. Given the facts, they had no legal basis to take an enforcement action. BUT THERE WAS ENOUGH OF A SUSPICIOUS NATURE FOR THE FAMS, PASSENGERS AND CREW TO TAKE NOTICE” (Washington Times 7/22/04). So the FAMS and CREW noticed the strange activity. So who in hell radioed the problem in to LAX, Mrs Jacobson? If it was just a “histerical passenger” on board then why an army Of FBI agents and L.A. police waiting for these Syrians at the terminal. Earlier reports stated that Mrs. Jacobsons’ report and fight attendant reports matched up very well. Word is out today that this and other incidents will soon be the source of House committee hearings. If FAMS has gotten wind of this then in my mind Mrs. Jacobson and her husband are being smeared. Do not ridicule this woman just yet.
LA wrote:
“You are fear-addicts and you need your fix. Whether its foreigners or homosexuals you will harvest and process your boogey-men and nothing will get in your way.”
With all due respect,this is about common sense, not fear. When you’ve been bitten by a rattlesnake, you don’t go looking for tweetie birds.
And I think it’s outrageous that honest people who recognize that fact feel compelled to lead off their comments with statements like “I hope this doesn’t sound racist” as an apology in advance to all the civil libertarians for using the brains God gave them.
It’s not about “foreigners” either. If those 24 9/11 perpetrators had all been caucasians from Alabama, you can betanyone would be uneasy on a flight with a dozen white guys in”Go Bama” T shirts carrying on the way these Syrian musicians did.
I have a lifelong liberal friend, a former news broadcaster, who is addicted to that kind of tortured apologist logic.
Here’s a portion of an email he sent me in response to the airline experience of Annie Jacobsen being discussed here….
“… I remain concerned about our loss of freedoms beyond the air travel issue. Balance is the key, I suppose. I just don’t want the balance to tip so far toward security that we are willing to let some extremists take over our government. Think Hitler, Stalin, etc. types…”
Talk about irrational fear and boogey men!
If you haven’t run into it already, this is the standard liberal response to logic and common sense-paranoid hyperbole.
Mention a prayer at a high school football game and they natter about a looming theocratic state.
Mention the logic of screening potential rattlesnakes at airports instead of hassling 80 year paraplegic grandmothers from Utah and they go into their “think Hitler, Stalin, etc” routines.
I’d love to see my friend, along with some of the “irrational fear” scribes here board an aircraft with 16 to 18 Syrians on it wearing Allah Akbar T shirts and sneakers with fuses sticking out of the heels, scurrying back and forth to the
bathroom, passing notes, box cutters and cold solder up and down the aisle.
“Would you mind holding this gel pack while I solder this wire, buddy”?
StewaRDEESSSSSSSSSSSSSS…….!!!!!
We all have an opinion on every issue. We are completely polarized politically. Intimidated by all the Political Coprrectedness and swayed on a regular basis by the news media. We are really great in this country at 20/20 hindsite.
I would think that if there is another attack on our homeland it would most likely come from those who have threatened to do so. That, I believe would be radical Mid Eastern Islamic Jihadists.
Two reactions would follow. First the media would tell us about the discriptions of the “alleged: hi-jackers, and then they would tell us that it was all the fault of President Bush.
If more people were willing to fly with large groups of young Middle Eastern men or women we could get “logical (liberal) statistics” for the percentage of attacks on innocent civilians. Anyone want to volunteer?
My reaction to this is good for Annie…Profiling??? You bet. If my loved ones or I am flying I want the whole profiling routine on all the passengers, flight crew, ground crew, luggage handlers, maintenance and fueling crew.
Do we watch for suspicious behavior? Uh Huh. Why do they make so many trips to the facilities? Do they all have bladder problems….or could it be a more sinister reason?
My point LA and Kevin and Monkey is that liberals tend to call names. One of you called Annie hysterical. One of you resorted to calling us racist and full of fear. The last of you called us bigoted.
Your rhetoric is extreme. Your rhetoric doesn’t account for all of the facts of the case and all of the facts that have presented themselves over the past couple decades and September 11th.
You don’t pursuade anyone with your rhetoric. You only dissuade and it’ll be the reason for George Bush winning even though he is too liberal for the average conservative and libertarian. Because on the one issue of national security we have common sense and you guys have illogic.
You make judement after judgement of us instead of debating the points or issues. One day I hope, you can debate without name calling and judging us the way you do. It isn’t helpful.
Tar and feathering Annie does the opposite of furthering our national security. It’ll be hard pressed for another Annie to come forward with their story because of fear of being maligned and torn apart by the likes of you three.
The less we hear from Annie’s about their experiences the less we benefit and the more we lose. If we all collectively come to the realization that those were perfectly fine gentlement who used the lavaratory for praying and the items they brough with them back and forth were just fine then GOOD ! We all WIN !
But if in the process we all come to the collective realization that it might be wise to prohibit bringing items like camera’s (which can be gutted and have different inards) back and forth to other passengers, then GOOD ! We all WIN ! And if we come to the realization that it isn’t good to have a line for the lavaratory in the front of the plane near the cockpit and we come up with another system instead of a line then GOOD ! We all WIN !
If you guys want to write “hysterical”, “racist”, “living in fear” blah blah blah. Go ahead. But you are living with your head in the sand after a WELL ESTABLISHED PATTERN has been REALIZED. Like the happy go lucky puppy that hasn’t learned yet when the bad owner raises his hand to strike that he just might strike. Sad.
It’s sadder that you’re that puppy telling other puppies (us) that they are stupid for living in fear when all we are doing is discussing, watching, documenting and even hoping for a little more pattern acceptance in the questioning and searching of those WHO HAVE ESTABLISHED THE PATTERN.
My, my, Baklava
Aren’t you the overgeneralizing paranoid. I wrote nothing upon which you can base your screed against me. I never called anybody names. But from your response to what I did write I feel quite justified in calling you paranoid.
Dear LiberalAvenger and A Hewitt,
If you are truly without fear, then I suggest you join the Army or Marine Corps and volunteer to serve in Iraq and Afghanistan. Living without fear in the US is not a very impressive feat. Living without fear while actually defending your country is another thing.
At least our men and women who serve have conquered that fear, and are able to support your right to live without a care in the world. So don’t complain when you are dead. Just don’t volunteer to be carefree with our lives when the rest of us are careful with whom we trust it.
You may think anyway you wish. You may only act in conformance to our law and our customs if you want our approval or our acceptance of your behavior. All these events have proven is that that bloggers, reporters, and normal folks who aren’t intelligence analysts or security personnel have no business expressing their views as if they know better than the people who do this for a living. Intelligence and security belong in the hands of professional who will do their best, maybe make mistakes, but eventually catch the bad folks through a chain of evidence and information.
I don’t know if the story is true or false, wrong or right. But it is at least evidence the government took it seriously enough to investigate and that Ms. Jacobson was certainly correct to be concerned. No harm, no foul yet on either side. But shame on us if we trust this was nothing to be looked at and she was just a hysterical female.
So far, everybody’s post here is pretty far over the top.
Monkey,
You weren’t part of the people dumping on Annie? I believe you did.
BTW, You pursuaded me. To believe what I don’t know. But you definately pursuaded me with your wit and intellect.
You called people names again. So typical of a liberal. Yes. I generalize and you fulfill.
Several things:
1. I spoke by phone this week several times to Dave Adams at the Federal Air Marshals Service, on the record. He confirmed Annie Jacobsen’s account of what happened on that flight, but he said that the men were not terrorists, only musicians. If I had been on that flight, I would have been as alarmed by the behavior of those musicians as Annie Jacobsen. You don’t have six Arab men traveling together stand up as the plane is descending, disobeying the seat-belt sign, and decide to go potty without thinking, Something very strange is going on here.
2. I’ve been barked at on planes post-9/11 by flight attendants for doing far less than those Syrians did. Why did those flight attendants let them get away with violating federal rules, and not say a thing to them the whole time if they (the flight attdts) weren’t frightened too?
3. I spoke to a top airline industry security expert this week, on background. I asked him what he thought of the Annie Jacobsen story. He said that innocently or not, the way the Syrians behaved on the plane was very much in line with how young Arab male passengers behave during what the airline he’s affiliated with has concluded were post-9/11 “dry runs” — which this expert said were happening all the time.