African “asylum shoppers” attempt to lie their way into Ireland

I like that—instead of asylum seekers, let’s use the phrase asylum shoppers!

A new UK system to track rejected asylum seekers as they “shop” around with different names and even different nationalities attempting to get into Ireland  has revealed some surprising (to some!) statistics.   But, of course those Somalis coming across our US borders and asking for asylum are all legit, right?

From the Irish Independent (Oh, boy, watch for it! The Irish Immigrant Council will be on the paper’s case again! See what happened in 2008, here.):

TWO-THIRDS of failed asylum seekers investigated so far this year under a new agreement with the UK were found to be involved in identity swapping, the Irish Independent has learnt.

Cross-checks carried out by gardai using British fingerprint records revealed that about 1,300 out of 2,000 failed asylum seekers investigated were known to Britain’s Border Agency under a different name.

Of those looked at, about a third had given a different nationality to the UK authorities.

The scale of the identity swapping scam was uncovered under a data sharing plan, which is a key feature of a common travel area agreement signed by Ireland and Britain last Christmas.

The aim of the data sharing is to unearth previously undisclosed UK immigration histories that could help the Irish authorities in processing the cases of failed asylum seekers, a senior official told the Irish Independent last night.

He said this information was vital in helping to determine whether a deportation order should be issued against an applicant.

Of the 2,000 asylum seekers investigated, cross-checks found 600 had already been identified by UK agencies either as asylum shoppers with previous applications to the UK or as previous British visa seekers.

In the majority of fingerprint matches, those claiming asylum in Ireland had already been granted UK visas.

The official added that more than 80 people who had claimed asylum here as Somalis had previously been granted a UK visa using a Tanzanian identity.

Tip of the iceberg! 

“This is only the tip of the iceberg”, the official predicted last night….

Yup!

Update:  Identity problem keeps supposed Somali woman from marrying in Ireland, here.  LOL! Looks like some of these people need the services of the reality show along with Barack Obama—Who do you think you are?

Get ready for it! Next they will ask for us to resettle “refugees” from South Africa!

And, they don’t mean the persecuted white minority!

As I have written many times on these pages, the Rainbow Nation*, that supposed model for racial inclusion and socialist harmony is imploding.  Can you believe it!  They have xenophobia.  They can’t use the word racism because all those busy persecuting each other are various ethnic groups from around Africa.

I have written many posts on South Africa and how the flood gates (the borders) are open and people throughout destitute Africa are arriving in South Africa asking for asylum.  South Africans (blacks!) have reacted violently at times as they try to hold on to their country and their livelihoods in the wake of the tsunami of illegal aliens, the large majority of whom are economic migrants.

And, it is no wonder they are coming, here is what the African National Congress—the ruling party in the “model” nation—offers its people.  “There shall be peace and friendship!” (dammit!)

The Freedom Charter, which was adopted by the Congress of the People in 1955, remains the basic policy document of the ANC.

The Freedom Charter declares that:

* The people shall govern
* All national groups shall have equal rights
* The people shall share in the country`s wealth
* The land shall be shared among those who work it
* All shall be equal before the law
* All shall enjoy equal human rights
* There shall be work and security
* The doors of learning and culture shall be opened
* There shall be houses, security and comfort
* There shall be peace and friendship

Any idiot knows you can’t offer that and then expect people to respect your borders!

So are we now going to mop up the mess?   Are we going to use the Malta-model?

Ethiopian Community Development Council (one of nine major federal refugee contractors) plants the seeds for resettlement of South Africa’s illegal aliens.

At the May 1 US State Department hearing/meeting/scoping (whatever you want to call it), the Ethiopian Community Development Council said this (below) in their testimony (and they surely aren’t talking about the persecuted whites of South Africa who have begun to ask for asylum in the West).

Refugees in South Africa

In 2010 and 2011, South Africa received the most asylum application of any country in the world, according to UNHCR, with 107,000 asylum seekers registered in 2011.  The Consortium for Refugees and Migrants in South Africa (CoRMSA) reports that according to empirical estimates, the number of Zimbabweans alone in South Africa is between one to two million, though only a small percentage is legally recognized.  Other major asylum seeking and refugee populations in South Africa come from Angola, Burundi, Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Rwanda, and Somalia.  Regardless of their status, all refugees in South Africa face serious life and livelihood-threatening issues tied to xenophobia and discrimination.  Though laws allow refugees to access basic services, in practice they are denied public health care, discriminated against by government institutions, and often face violence, including sexual and gender-based violence.  [How can that be! This is the rainbow nation, the socialist model for the world!---ed] Refugees are often located in areas where they share their poor socioeconomic status with local communities, and are therefore seen as competition for housing and work.  As a result, refugees live in poor conditions in informal housing, squatting in abandoned buildings, or have become homeless.  Additionally, refugees face difficulty with legal documentation, and UNHCR documents are often not recognized and provide little protection or legitimacy regarding work.

Watch for it!  They are priming the pump for us to take some of South Africa’s illegal population off its hands—after all, they have seen what we have done in Malta with the precedent-setting Malta model where we transform another country’s illegal aliens into refugees destined for the United States!   Speaking of which we have a new story this week about Africans (mostly single young Muslim men again!) who got to Malta and then were given their refugee ticket to your town!   For more on the Malta-model, use our search function for Malta, but here is one post that will give you some idea of what we have done.

*Search RRW for ‘rainbow nation’ for more on the situation with South Africa’s new form of apartheid.

Auntie Zeituni’s got a book too!

And, it’s about being abused in America, or so says Howie Carr writing at the Boston Herald.

Readers will recall that in 2008 then candidate Obama’s long-lost dear Auntie from ‘Dreams from my Father’ fame was found living illegally (she had been ordered deported) in public housing in Boston.  A subsequent trial (where she had a hot shot lawyer) resulted in a grant of asylum in the US.  Now she has a tell-all book.   I really hope she addresses her previously reported anger at her nephew for leaving her out of White House family doings (I bet that is the elegant First Lady’s doing).

Here is Carr:

Auntie Zeituni has written a book. It’s called “Tears of Abuse,” on account of how tough she’s had it.

Have I read it? Of course not. Have you read her nephew’s best-seller — Dreams from My Ghostwriter, I mean Father? No one has — it’s sold millions of copies, but until two weeks ago, not a single reader got far enough into it to learn that Obama was a dog-eater with “composite” girlfriends.

Anyway, I have the press release on “Tears of Abuse,” which describes Auntie Zeituni’s journey to the United States “where she faces the unthinkable; failing health and quarantined in a hospital while on vacation in a foreign country.”

Vacation? Surely she meant to say “welfare.”

“As her story unfolds she becomes a resident of (a) homeless shelter and a subject of deportation.”

How dare they! Just because she’s an illegal alien, they want to deport her.

Carr is so funny, I didn’t know where to stop.  But, it’s unethical to post the whole piece, so please visit Carr’s column, here.   I might be tempted to read Auntie Z’s book to see if she has her version of events in sync with “Dreams from my father.”

Since we are on the subject of “Dreams…,” here is the answer to something I wondered about a few weeks ago when there was all the hoop-la about Obama eating dogs in Indonesia.  Muslims hate dogs—they are on the list of the ten most vile things on earth, right up there with dead bodies, feces and pigs.  So, I had been thinking that Muslims probably don’t eat them.  Here is a story from a couple of weeks ago by John Hinderaker at Powerline about Obama and dog-eating (hat tip:  Judy).  He ends his piece with this:

ONE MORE THING: Muslims don’t eat dogs. Barack Obama lived with a Muslim stepfather in a Muslim area of Indonesia. Dogs were not eaten there; presumably not in Obama’s Muslim household. So Obama’s claim in his autobiography that he ate dog in Indonesia may well be false–an error introduced by Bill Ayers or whoever actually wrote Obama’s autobiography. But it is way too late now for Obama to disavow the autobiography that he allegedly wrote.

Texas governor criticizes “unaccompanied minor” program of US government

Update May 9th:  More on unaccompanied illegal kids here at the Houston Chronicle.

Before you read this post, please go back to this post I wrote in March which gives one horror story of an unaccompanied minor in Galveston, TX  who had originally been ‘under the care’ of Catholic Charities (which receives payment from the feds for his and thousands of other illegal alien kids care) and has become an alleged “unaccompanied” adult sexual predator.

Here is Texas Governor Perry (via Fox News) on how this program is encouraging a boom in kids crossing the border without parents.   He also charges that Obama is actually pushing this.  Although I gotta say Perry himself allowed for another magnet for illegal kids—subsidized college education for illegal alien kids (but that is another story for another time).

Texas Gov. Rick Perry is accusing the Obama administration of “perpetuating” a recent “surge” in illegal immigrant children who are crossing into the U.S. from Mexico and Central America without their parents and often falling straight into government care.

In a letter obtained by Fox News, Perry wrote to President Obama on Friday citing stats that show more than 5,200 “unaccompanied minors” were taken into U.S. custody in the first six months of the fiscal year — a more than 90 percent increase compared with the same period a year ago.

Perry, a former Republican presidential candidate, claimed that a failure to immediately send them back is “perpetuating the problem” by encouraging other children and teenagers to make the trek. He said the journey is dangerous for the children, and their flow into the United States is a burden on his state and others. The governor urged the administration to eliminate the “temptation” to make “this tragic and illegal migration.”

The Refugee program looking for expansion into new and lucrative territory?

A recent Associated Press article on the surge reported that 1,390 unaccompanied children crossed over the border and into U.S. custody in March alone. Some have even been housed at Lackland Air Force Base on a temporary basis while they are being processed.

The children, after being initially detained by the Department of Homeland Security, are typically handed over to the care of the Office of Refugee Resettlement — a division of the Department of Health and Human Services.   [where a couple of the federal "church" contractors get paid to take care of them until they "emancipate" them into the US population at age 18---ed]

I noticed the other day as I read through the testimony from the Refugee meeting in Arlington, VA last week, here, that there were many mentions of the “need” to boost this program.   Another chicken-or-egg question?   Are the kids coming anyway or are they being enticed into coming by this federal program (and the hope of amnesty through the Dream Act someday)?

Canada: Tamil Tigers on board the MV Sun Sea; Tigers in Oakland?

So what else did you expect!

I should be writing about yesterday’s State Department meeting where federal contractors made their pitches for more refugees for FY2013 and I will get to that shortly (I hope), but to add a little variety to our stories about bureaucracy in Washington, I’m posting this update of a story I wrote about back in 2010—Sri Lankans loaded on ships and taken to Canada by human smugglers, here.  Canadian immigration officials are sorting through the nearly 500 illegal entrants from this one ship to sort out the terrorist Tigers from legitimate asylum seekers.

By the way, here is a little Tiger trivia:   Tamil Tigers are famous for pioneering the use of the suicide belt.

From the National Post:

Deportation orders have been issued against two more of the 492 Sri Lankan refugee claimants who arrived off the B.C. coast in 2010 aboard the smuggling ship MV Sun Sea.

In separate decisions, the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada ordered the expulsion of both men, ruling one had engaged in people smuggling and the other had been a member of a Tamil rebel group.

The cases bring to 19 the number of Sun Sea migrants who have been issued deportation orders to date. All have been declared inadmissible to Canada due to their involvement in terrorism and crime.

“Canada opens its doors to those who work hard and play by the rules. However, we must crack down on those who seek to take advantage of our generosity, often for financial gain,” Julie Carmichael, spokeswoman for Public Safety Minister Vic Toews, said Tuesday.

Neither of the latest deportees was named in the heavily edited rulings released to the National Post, but one was found to have served in the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam between 2005 and 2006, when he was in his mid-20s.

Read the whole article, there is lots of interesting information about trafficking and what it costs and who is making a fortune from it.  Makes me wonder again who is trafficking Somalis into the US.

Sri Lankans to Oakland!

This reminds me that the US State Department and the International Rescue Committee helped Australia with a little illegal immigration problem of theirs by taking illegal alien Sri Lankans off the Australians hands in 2010 and placing them in Oakland, CA.   Here is the story I wrote nearly two years ago.   And, this is a point I made in my testimony to the State Department—Congress should forbid the use of this program for other foreign policy objectives.

Just a reminder that the International Rescue Committee’s Anne Richard has been confirmed as Obama’s pick to head the State Department refugee program.  Another contractor is now in charge of doling out the federal bucks (your bucks!).  She started her work this week by traveling to Switzerland, Iraq and Jordan.

US Bishops on their knees begging for more taxpayer dollars

Your tax dollars!

I guess they didn’t learn from the recent controversy over free birth control and Sandra Fluke‘s attack on Georgetown University (and the Catholic Church) that once you take Caesar’s money, Caesar expects payback.    Yesterday I posted at my other blog a story about how the Bishops are back lobbying Congress for your tax dollars for their “charitable” work.  (See my post on their groveling expedition last year here).

Then last night I found this interesting little nugget when re-reading that scintillating 2008 Annual Report to Congress on the Refugee Program.  Although this is a tiny drop of the millions the USCCB gets from the federal treasury, it is enlightening.

In 1988, the Bishops set up a legal clinic ostensibly for the poor IMMIGRANT (what about poor Americans?).  Fine and dandy if that is what they want to do with their parishioners’ charity, but about a half million dollars of their budget every year comes from all of you.   Here is the history of CLINIC:

In 1988, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) established CLINIC as a legally distinct 501(c)(3) organization to support a rapidly growing network of community-based immigration programs. CLINIC’s network originally comprised 17 programs. It has since increased to 201 diocesan and other affiliated immigration programs with 290 field offices in 47 states.  The network employs roughly 1,200 BIA accredited representatives and attorneys who, in turn, serve 600,000 low-income immigrants each year.

CLINIC doesn’t just help the poor IMMIGRANTS with their legal needs, it gets political.  Here, for example, they are opposing the Arizona Law.

Asylee Hotline funded by feds

For readers who don’t know about asylum, it is the other side of the refugee coin.  Refugees are screened abroad and we fly them here, asylum seekers arrive on their own steam at our borders and ask for asylum.   Refugees get all their welfare goodies almost immediately, asylum seekers must first be granted asylum then they can sign up for public assistance (subsidized housing, job training, food stamps, medical care, etc.).

Here Open Borders immigration lawyer Jason Dzubow tells us about how the number of asylum seekers is mushrooming.   When the Kennedy/Biden Refugee Act of 1980 was passed and signed by Jimmy Carter, asylum seekers were a rarity — the odd Russian ballet dancer for example.   In 2011, 74,000 asylum seekers “found their way” to our borders (top three sending countries—China, Mexico, and India).   They claimed political, religious, or sexual orientation persecution in their home countries.  In reality, most are economic migrants making up whoppers about being persecuted!   [By the way, I reported here that I think NGO's are actually giving these "asylum seekers" guidance.]

Back to that little nugget about CLINIC and its taxpayer-funded grant in 2008.  They got a quarter of a million bucks for an asylee hotline where an asylee could call in and find out how to “access benefits and services” (where to find the local welfare office) (p. 36):

Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc., ($250,000) for an asylee hotline. The Catholic Legal
Immigration Network, Inc. (CLINIC) operated an asylum hotline, which provided outreach and
service referral to individuals granted asylum. During FY 2008, the multilingual operators
received a total of 4,131 calls from asylees who were uncertain on where to access benefits and
services. Unlike refugees who come with a direct link to the voluntary resettlement agencies,
asylum seekers have no such connection.

You paid $60 per phone call.  And, you can bet some were from asylum seekers looking for a lawyer!

Here is my question, if this is a needed service, why are we giving tax dollars to an unaccountable-to-the-taxpayer non-profit group?  This project could just as well be run from a hotline at the Dept. of Health and Human Services (where presumably our elected officials would have oversight).  Is it just to continue to keep federal government tentacles in the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, so they won’t squawk so much when the likes of Sandra Fluke insists that Georgetown University give students free birth control?

South African constitution makes promises it can’t keep as economic migrants pour in

Every time I see one of these articles (coming with some regularity now) about South Africa’s troubles with immigrants seeking the promised land and the local population that resents them, that ol’ schadenfreude is hard to hide.  South Africa threw off the yoke of “white oppression” and a myth was born that the country would be a model for the world—it would be the RAINBOW nation where people of all races would live in harmony as they were directed to do by a Communist-inspired constitution.

I wondered, when Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg recently touted South Africa’s Constitution as a model for emerging ‘democracies’ (ROFLMAO) like Egypt, if she ever read newspapers (maybe Katie Couric should ask her what she reads).  Here we learned that the African National Congress promises the moon to anyone in South Africa—a job, food, housing, fairness, peace and security.  No wonder they are flowing in by the tens of thousands from across Africa and the Middle East.

But, the government is learning the hard way, you can’t have Open Borders while offering security and sustenance to anyone who gets there.

Here is the latest news on how the government is trying to cope with the problem:

JOHANNESBURG—South Africa, which receives more individual asylum requests than any other country, announced Thursday it is taking steps to cope with the influx.

The government’s immigration department said in a statement that it faces an “immense challenge” and was extending hours at offices across the country that accept asylum applications from people who have traveled from as far away as Pakistan. Mkuseli Apleni, the department’s top bureaucrat, also said police will help manage lines at the offices, where fights and stampedes have broken out.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees welcomed the moves. The agency’s spokeswoman for southern Africa, Tina Ghelli, told The Associated Press that her agency is concerned that people fleeing oppression and violence are finding it difficult to get help because economic immigrants are abusing and overwhelming the system in South Africa.

According to UNHCR figures, more than 100,000 people sought asylum in South Africa last year. That was well above the next highest number of applications received, some 74,000 in the United States.

And, can you believe it! They have xenophobia too (and it’s not the white people who fear the foreigner).

Somalis make up the second largest group of asylum seekers in South Africa, according to the U.N. refugees agency. In South Africa, they are not confined to refugee camps and can work and receive state welfare benefits.

Most asylum applications are from Zimbabweans, whose neighboring country is gripped by political violence and economic uncertainty. Congolese, Bangladeshis and Pakistanis also apply, UNHCR said.

Xenophobic attitudes led to an explosion of violence against foreigners, particularly those from elsewhere in Africa, in some of South Africa’s poorest communities in 2008.

Indeed tribalism is alive and well even in the Rainbow Nation with the model constitution.

Uncle Omar gets to drive anyway (as well as stay in the US)

Uncle Omar of course is President Barack Obama’s illegal alien uncle (and brother to Aunt Zeituni) “discovered” living in Massachusetts for decades.  We told you about his bust for drunk driving last August and here is more on whether he was ever lost at all!

Just a week or so ago we heard he lost his Massachusetts drivers license (not really!), but not a word about whether he will be granted asylum (Aunt Zeituni had good lawyers and did get asylum, here).

From the Boston Herald today:

Just a week after he copped a plea in a drunken-driving rap, President Obama’s illegal-alien uncle has landed a hardship driver’s license from the Registry of Motor Vehicles, making it perfectly legal for him to drive in Massachusetts — even though the feds say he doesn’t belong here.

Onyango Obama, 67, who lost his regular license for 45 days last week, scored his limited license yesterday from the Registry’s Wilmington branch, after convincing a hearing officer that life without wheels would have posed an undue hardship on his livelihood as a liquor-store manager. Obama bolstered his case with a letter from his employer, Conti Liquors, as well as proof that he’d enrolled in an alcohol-treatment program.

[.....]

Of the state’s decision to award Obama a license even though the federal government considers him an illegal alien, Lavoie would only say, “Registry business is based on Registry records.”

[.....]

The license award drew fire from one advocate of tough enforcement on illegals, Bristol County Sheriff Thomas Hodgson.

“Our democracy is predicated on law,” Hodgson said. “When we start to interpret these laws differently and manipulate them the way we want them to work for certain people, we start to send a mixed message to people that the law doesn’t really matter. Its subject to interpretation. You don’t have to follow the law. They find ways to justify it. We need the laws to be very clear. We need ‘no’ to mean ‘no’ again.”

Hodgson, along with sheriffs in Plymouth and Worcester counties, stood up for Secure Communities, a program that feeds local police fingerprint checks into federal databases to check the citizenship status of accused criminals. Gov. Deval Patrick has refused to enroll the state in the program.

What no public transportation in Boston?

We sure don’t want any illegal aliens experiencing an “undue hardship” now do we?

Watch for it—Onyango’s lawyers will probably  base an asylum claim on the very real possibility that if he is sent back to Kenya now he will be a marked man by the many enemies his nephew has created.

Somali guilty in Maine: Home healthcare fraud AND immigration fraud

I am convinced that somewhere in Africa they teach fraud school!  And, this guy was awarded a Masters Degree!

We first told you about the arrest of Mohdi Ali aka Mahdi Alio in 2009, here.  I had a laugh at the time that the entire article never mentioned the words Somali or Somalia as some in Lewiston were unhappy (and still are) that Somali “refugees” and illegal aliens have targeted their town.  So, the article left readers guessing about where Ali came from.

Nearly three years later, Ali is found guilty.   From the Sun Journal (where this time the word Somalia is in the first line):

A Somalia native who lied about living in refugee camps to enter the U.S. and made false claims to obtain MaineCare benefits faces up to 15 years in prison and up to $500,000 in fines.

Mohdi M. Ali, 56, of Lewiston, also known as Canadian resident Mahdi Alio, pleaded guilty Thursday in federal court in Portland to fraudulently obtaining an alien registration card, making false statements in connection with a health care benefit program and using a Social Security number obtained on the basis of false information.

Oh looky here, Canada will get him back after he gets out of prison!  Lucky Canada!

Ali faces up to 10 years in prison on the immigration charge and five years for false statements and Social Security charges. As part of his plea agreement, Ali agreed to be removed to Canada after completing any prison term imposed.

Think about this!  No one in our immigration system figured any of this out before granting him asylum in the US!

According to information released by U.S. Attorney Thomas E. Delahanty II, Ali came to the United States from Somalia in 1990 to attend college [At age 34?---ed].  He later moved to Canada, where he became a Canadian citizen in 1995. He returned to the United States three years later, where he applied for and was granted asylum. He was later granted permanent resident alien status after falsely claiming to have lived in refugee camps in Kenya from 1992 to 1998.

He ripped-off MaineCare to the tune of a million bucks in one year (but his fine could be $500,000)!  Wonder where the money went?  I bet he had one of those money transfer operations to Africa in the back room!

In 2009, federal agents raided Ali’s downtown Lewiston business, Decent Home Care Inc. Ali was owner and president of the company, which provided nonmedical, health care-related services to disabled people. At the time, Ali told the Sun Journal the business served between 35 and 40 clients.

A Sun Journal investigation later revealed that Decent Home Care Inc. received more than $1 million in payments from the state in 2008 to provide nonmedical services to the elderly and disabled. The company was paid to deliver in-home services to 45 clients under the state’s Medicaid program, known as MaineCare, meaning it spent an estimated $22,222 per client that year.

There is more, read on.

For new readers, we have dozens of posts on Lewiston.  Just type the word into our search function.

Did you know that 1993 World Trade Center bomber got into the US as an asylum seeker?

Why am I reporting this old news now?  First, because it was new news to me as I read Richard Miniter’s 2011 spellbinder “Mastermind”about Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. When I’m away with no computer, it’s sometimes a good thing—I can read whole books.  I’m going to tell you more about KSM and how he went to college in the Muslim triangle of North Carolina in another post, but in the meantime I wanted to mention Ramzi Yousef (now locked away for life in a super-max in Colorado).  Ramzi Yousef  is KSM’s nephew.

When this 1993 New York Times article was written no one had even begun to connect all the dots, but imagine if Martha  Morales had been listened to by her superiors at the INS.

Since this was all new to me, I thought it might be to you as well—-it happened long before most of us were paying attention to Islamic terrorism and long before I became interested in refugees and asylees.

And, the other reason I’m telling you about this is because readers should know that the Refugee Resettlement Program is a twin to our Asylum Program.  The only difference is that with the refugee program prospective “refugees” are screened abroad and we transport them here, and “asylum seekers” arrive on our borders by any means (in this case by plane) and then ask for asylum claiming they were persecuted somewhere.   More often then not they are granted a temporary stay, released, and asked to return for an asylum hearing.  I am not kidding—we are still releasing them into society just as we did Ramzi Yousef on September 1, 1992.

As our refugee entrant numbers are declining in recent years, the asylum numbers are rising as open borders activists focus their attention on that program.

Here is the old New York Times story written before (in November 1993) it had been firmly established that Ramzi Yousef was the ringleader of the 1993 bombing, and long before anyone figured out who the “brain” behind the operation was—KSM.

An immigration inspector said she recommended that a man later suspected of being a ringleader in the World Trade Center explosion be prohibited from entering the United States when he applied for political asylum at Kennedy International Airport in September 1992, but she was overruled.

The witness, Martha Morales, testifying in the trial of four men accused of setting a bomb in the World Trade Center on Feb. 26, was speaking of Ramzi Ahmed Yousef. Investigators say they believe he was to have been deeply involved in the bombing, but he left the country hours after the trade center explosion. His whereabouts are unknown.

Mr. Yousef arrived in this country from Pakistan on Sept. 1, 1992, carrying an Iraqi passport but no visa. Previous testimony has indicated that he was questioned by immigration officers at the airport and then admitted to the United States when he applied for political asylum. The indictment in the case identifies him as one of the men who ordered the chemicals that were used in the bomb and helped to build it. Then, on the day of the explosion, Mr. Yousef flew from Kennedy Airport to Karachi, Pakistan, under the name Abdul Basit.

Note all the problems Ms. Morales reported about Yousef, but was subsequently overruled by her superiors who let the killer in.

Some of Mr. Yousef’s importance in the case is because of his alleged connections to one of the defendants on trial, Ahmad M. Ajaj. Mr. Ajaj arrived on the same Sept. 1 flight as Mr. Yousef, bearing an altered Swedish passport under a false name and carrying manuals on bomb-making that, according to investigators, had Mr. Yousef’s fingerprints on them.

[....]

Ms. Morales told the jury yesterday that she was the immigration inspector who questioned Mr. Yousef at Kennedy after he arrived from Pakistan on Sept. 1. Mr. Ajaj was detained when it was discovered that the Swedish passport he was using had been altered and his photograph substituted for the original.

Ms. Morales read out the sworn statement that she took from Mr. Yousef. In it, Mr. Yousef said he was an Iraqi citizen living in Pakistan who had been beaten by Iraqi soldiers during the 1991 invasion of Kuwait and had suffered religious and political persecution in Pakistan.

Asked how he had boarded a Pakistan International Airlines flight to New York without a visa to the United States, Mr. Yousef said he had paid $2,700 to a Pakistani official who had provided him with a boarding pass. He said he had traveled alone, and he had given an address in Houston as his residence in the United States.

Ms. Morales said Mr. Yousef had worn a colorful Middle Eastern costume made out of silk, with “puffed sleeves” and “harem pants.”

Ms. Morales said that a search found that Mr. Yousef had papers indicating that he was using two names besides the one on his passport. The boarding pass, she said, bore the name Azan Mohammed. Mr. Yousef was also found to have an identification card from something called the Islamic Information Center in Arizona, which had his picture on it but the name Khurram Khan.

The answers Mr. Yousef gave in his sworn statement provided at least two circumstantial connections with Mr. Ajaj, though neither of them were specifically called to the jury’s attention. One was the reference to Houston, where Mr. Ajaj lived before leaving the country for Pakistan in April last year. The other was the alias Khurram Khan, the same name that appeared on Mr. Ajaj’s doctored Swedish passport.

Noting that Mr. Yousef had “multiple ID’s,” Ms. Morales said that she recommended that he be detained by the Immigration and Naturalization Service. She referred her recommendation to other officials who decided to release Mr. Yousef on his own recognizance and for him to return for a hearing on his request for political asylum later.

Of course he never returned for that hearing….