Here's one to add to the growing list of revelations about immigration since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks: an overtaxed, underfunded immigration investigations unit. While the Immigration and Naturalization Service increased deportations of foreign-born criminals in recent years, it says it has been unable to deport 300,000 others it says should go--250,000 among them have vanished into American society.
And INS resources to track down this missing population--who run the gamut from students who overstayed their visas to green card holders with felony records--have not kept pace with the skyrocketing growth of undocumented immigrants living in the country, now about 8 million people nationwide. . . .
None of the 19 suspected hijackers from the Sept. 11 attack had been ordered deported by an immigration judge, according to the INS. But the agency thinks as many as six might have entered the country illegally and, had they been encountered by INS, could have been deported.
The bulk of the vanished population consists of those who overstayed a business, tourist or student visa and those who entered illegally by land or sea, said INS spokeswoman Karen Kraushaar. "We cannot find them. That's why we can't remove them," Kraushaar said. "We're trying to track a population that is fundamentally trying to evade us."
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