U.S. Watches Libyans, Won’t Deport Them

The U.S. government is closely watching Libyans who live in the United States but has no plans to order them out of the country, the Reagan Administration told Congress today.

“We have considered whether to send them home and have decided not to,” John Whitehead, deputy secretary of state, told a pair of House Foreign Affairs subcommittees.

The FBI surveillance is being increased in the wake of last week’s bombing raid on Libya, Whitehead said. He was responding to questions from lawmakers who raised the possibility that some of the Libyans here might carry out retaliatory terrorist raids ordered by Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi.

The United States decided not to kick the Libyans out because “there will be a Libya after Kadafi” and it may help the U.S. position in a post-Kadafi Libya if a number of Libyans have been closely exposed to the United States, Whitehead said.

Parker Borg, deputy director of the State Department’s counter-terrorism office, told the panels that the “number of Libyans in the United States is somewhere between 2,000 and 3,000” and most of them are students.