Deporting The INS

摘要

The papers from the immigration and Naturalization Service arrived in the morning mail at Huffman Aviation International like notices for long-overdue library books. The forms in the envelope that Huffman president Rudi Dekkers opened Monday, March 11, announced that Mohamed Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi were cleared for takeoff, their M-1 student visas approved for flying lessons―six months to the day after the two terrorists steered hijacked jetliners into oblivion and mass carnage at the World Trade Center towers. In the bizarre bureaucracy of the INS, the system had functioned precisely as it was designed to, which is why the INS is about to be torn apart. An angry President Bush ordered an investigation when he read about the incident. Furious members of Congress are pushing legislation to gut the INS, a bureaucracy that never had many friends in Washington and is now totally alienated. "We've all been dumbfounded by these revelations," fumed Congressman James Sensenbrenner Jr., who chairs the House Judiciary Committee. "This fiasco is indicative of the enormous mismanagement of the INS."