Return to Transcripts main page

American Morning

Rep. Sensenbrenner Discusses INS Approval of 9/11 Hijackers' Visas

Aired March 14, 2002 - 08:08   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: Now we are going to move on to the fallout from a major blunder at the INS. Six months after the terror attacks, the Immigration and Naturalization Service notified a Florida flight school that student visas for two of the 9/11 hijackers had been approved. The Bush administration was embarrassed and outraged. The attorney general has now ordered an investigation, and the president says changes must be made.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The INS needs to be reformed. And it's one of the reasons why I called for the separation of the paperwork side of the INS from the enforcement side, and obviously the paperwork side needs a lot of work. It's inexcusable. And so we've got to reform the INS, and we've got to push hard to do so. This is an interesting wake-up call for those who run the INS.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ZAHN: Some members of Congress have complained that the INS is a major hole in the nation's defense against terrorism. And House Judiciary Chairman James Sensenbrenner believes the agency needs a complete overhaul. He joins us now from Washington this morning -- welcome to A.M.

REP. JAMES SENSENBRENNER (R), WISCONSIN: Good morning, Paula.

ZAHN: Glad you're with us this morning. First off, what kind of a danger do you think the problems at the INS present to our national security?

SENSENBRENNER: A huge danger. Immigration control is one of the major building blocks of Homeland Security. The INS has ordered deported 314,000 aliens that haven't left the country and don't know where many of these people are actually located. The only thing I think that we can do responsibly is to abolish the INS as we know it and reconstitute it into separate agencies with line authority, so we know who is responsible, and require people at the top who are qualified both in law enforcement for the enforcement end and a management in helping out the public in terms of the service end.

ZAHN: So the way you see things now, in the absence of any reform at all, this is simply an unmanageable bureaucracy?

SENSENBRENNER: It certainly is. There was a student visa tracking system mandated and funded by Congress over six years ago, which would have caught the Mohammed Atta visa. The INS never got around to implementing it. So as a result, Mohammed Atta probably entered the country last January of 2001 illegally, and even if he is not a dead terrorist, the visa approval came six months after Atta's course at the flight school ended. What good is a student visa if it comes after you graduate?

ZAHN: If I could for a second, sir, I want to read part of the INS' response to this controversy. Here is their prepared statement: "It is important to emphasize that the decisions regarding the request to change status were made in the summer of 2001 prior to the tragic events of September 11. It is equally important to recognize that when the applications were approved, the INS had no information indicating that Atta or Al-Shehhi had ties to terrorist organizations."

It goes on to say: "The current process for collecting and tracking information on students is paper-based and relies on manual data entry into a computer system. INS is transitioning to computer- based system. The new Student and Exchange Visitor Information System will eliminate notification delays by informing all parties simultaneously once the INS adjudication is made."

Too little, too late, sir?

SENSENBRENNER: Well, they certainly are making a lot of excuses. My committee sent a letter the INS on February 28 asking about the fact that Atta left the country and abandoned his request to change status from business visitor to student visa, and then was readmitted, even though he did not have a valid visa. We asked the INS to respond to us last Friday if they had attended to this maybe they wouldn't have mailed out the student visa approval to the flight school in Florida.

ZAHN: Now, that President Bush has joined this bandwagon, asking for reform soon, how long does the INS have to exist in its current form?

SENSENBRENNER: Well, it is my intention to schedule hearings and a committee vote on my bill to abolish the INS as we know it next month after Congress returns from the Easter recess. We had hoped to do this last fall, but when I scheduled a hearing and asked Commissioner Zigler to testify on it, he submitted his testimony late and I had to cancel the hearing. And this is just typical of everything that the INS does. It has a major managerial problem with 314,000 aliens who have already been ordered deported by a judge still in the country, and a 5 million case backlog of handling request for adjustment of status of aliens who are legally in this country.

So they don't kick out the bad folks, and they don't take care of the folks who are attempting to comply with our law. And I think that the Congress has probably had enough of this, because most congressmen's local offices have really become immigration offices because of the huge number of complaints that come to the attention of my colleagues and me.

ZAHN: Well, Rep. Sensenbrenner, we would like to stay in touch with you and follow the progress of that bill that you just laid out for us -- thank you for your time this morning.

SENSENBRENNER: Yes, thanks, Paula.

ZAHN: Keep us posted.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com.