Borderline Competent?

By Jodie Morse With Reporting by Lissa August/Washington, Paul Cuadros/Raleigh, Siobhan Morrissey/Miami, Melissa Sattley/on the Mexican border and Rebecca Winters/New York

Of all the frightening lessons America has learned since Sept. 11, one of the scariest must be how absurdly easy it was for the bad guys to get into the country and stay. The hijackers didn't slink across the border at midnight or flash expertly forged passports; 13 of the 19 entered this country legally, on tourist, business or student visas. More than 7 million foreigners enter the U.S. on visas each year, and close to 3 million of them overstay their visas, just as three of the terrorists did. The Immigration and Naturalization Service, the federal agency charged with screening those who would cross our borders, "has essentially evolved into a welcoming agency," says Jim Dorcy, a 30-year INS veteran who is now a consultant with the Federation for American Immigration Reform. "We treat the people who come to our doorstep as customers and look for some way to let them in," he says.

Since Sept. 11, the INS has set about pulling back the welcome mat. But doing so requires an abrupt shift in the agency's mission, which for the past decade has been informed by conflicting mandates. On the one hand, the U.S. has made a show of plugging up the Mexican border to keep out migrant workers and drug smugglers. Yet it gives much less public scrutiny to the millions who enter the country by air. Once foreigners reach American soil unlawfully, the INS, under pressure from industries that depend on cheap labor, does next to nothing to throw them out. The job of tracking the more than 6 million illegal aliens who've made it in falls to a squad of just 2,000 INS enforcement agents, a force the size of the San Diego police department. Even now agents have only limited access to federal crime databases. Not surprisingly, when two of the hijackers popped up on a CIA watch list in August, the INS had lost track of them.

Seven Senate and House hearings in the past three weeks have offered a welter of ideas for change, including a mammoth electronic database to track the comings and goings of all foreign visitors. (Such an information bank could cost $500 million, and is drawing cries of xenophobia.) Already passed in the antiterrorism package is a measure that will triple the number of immigration agents along the 4,000-mile Canadian border guarded in some places by nothing more than orange cones. Senator Edward Kennedy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary's immigration subcommittee and a longtime champion of open borders, will introduce legislation next week to produce new passports replete with fingerprints that would initiate instant background checks. Less flashy but no less crucial is training for the 900 consular officers who grant visas from State Department outposts across the globe.

The government is already taking quiet steps to reform the agency. INS commissioner James Ziglar, who took charge just two months ago, receives daily intelligence briefings. A rotating team of up to 1,000 INS agents works with the FBI to spot--and detain--suspects with immigration infractions. INS agents have also suddenly become sticklers for details. In January immigration officials grilled hijacking ringleader Mohamed Atta at Miami International Airport after he tried to use a visitor's visa to enter the country for flight school. They waved him through after ascertaining that his proper student visa was "pending." Today, border officials want to see the proper papers--even photo IDs from U.S. citizens.

"These same reforms were brought up after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, where one perpetrator was here on an expired visa," says Steven Camarota, director of research for the Center for Immigration Studies. "We lacked the sustained political will to put these things in place." Indeed Congressmen from Texas-border districts are already carping about loss of business. Worse, the INS is losing agents at the very moment it is supposed to button down the borders, because hundreds are seeking better-paying jobs as air marshals.

No reform can solve the central question bedeviling the agency: how to separate the many who want to tour Disney World from the few who might blow it up. The INS recently detained a Pakistani business analyst, who was trying to fly from Fort Lauderdale, Fla., to New York City but didn't have his papers with him. After the traveler's lawyer faxed a copy of his business visa, an INS agent let him board the plane with one final plea: "I hope you are not a terrorist. Don't embarrass us."

--With reporting by Lissa August/Washington, Paul Cuadros/Raleigh, Siobhan Morrissey/Miami, Melissa Sattley/on the Mexican border and Rebecca Winters/New York