IMMIGRATION : Criminals May Slip Through INS Loophole on Fingerprints

Twelve blocks from the Immigration and Naturalization Service headquarters, a foreigner with an extensive criminal record can deceive the owners of a fingerprint shop, get a fake set of prints and then use them at the INS to become a U.S. citizen.

The INS requires all immigrants who apply for naturalization to submit fingerprints so the FBI can run a background check. But agency personnel stopped taking fingerprints 10 years ago for budgetary reasons, instructing applicants to have them taken by private firms instead. In many cases, the applicants do so without providing proof of their identities, according to a report issued by the Justice Department inspector general.

The INS has failed to regulate private firms and has no means of preventing immigrants intent on hiding their arrest records from enlisting someone with a clean history to submit their prints instead, the report said.

Evidence of the problem lays just across town from the headquarters. Adrianne Lucke, manager of ASL Business Services, which started offering fingerprinting service four years ago, said she was never instructed by the INS to check applicants’ identification.

“No one ever instructed me that that’s what I have to do,” said Lucke, who fingerprints about 10 people each month.

Others have more established procedures. At Authorized Fingerprinting and Passport Photos in Los Angeles, owner Thomas Kitrell says he is leery of customers without identification who seek fingerprinting. He said he writes down the driver’s license number of every person who has prints taken.

“It is a problem and is something I’ve always felt is a big hole in the system,” Kitrell said. “We’re letting the world’s criminals into our country.”

Last year, the FBI turned up 9,000 arrest records among the 866,000 applications for U.S. immigration benefits that included fingerprints. But “an unlimited number” of immigrants with criminal histories could still slip by federal law enforcers if the INS doesn’t close loopholes in its application procedures, said Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.), who released a study of the problem Wednesday.

“We have enough problems with criminals born right here in the United States,” Lieberman said. “We don’t need to invite trouble by making it easier for criminal aliens to become criminal citizens.”

Lieberman suggested that the INS begin charging fees to immigrants applying for benefits to pay for in-house fingerprinting or start licensing private firms to take fingerprints. He said local law enforcement offices also could offer the service.

Lieberman threatened to introduce legislation to change INS policy if the agency does not act soon on its own.

Agency officials acknowledged Wednesday that their procedure is flawed, but they resisted the idea of imposing new fees on immigrants who already have to pay $90 simply to file a naturalization application.

“We’d have to charge more in a system that is already fee-based,” said Rick Kenney, an INS spokesman.

A task force created to develop better application procedures is due to issue its recommendations later this month, but Kenney cautioned that changes in agency rules may not take effect until August.

Applications for naturalization, asylum or other status may be denied depending on the seriousness of an applicant’s crimes. In most cases, felony convictions of drug trafficking, prostitution or other vice-related offenses would be grounds for rejection, according to INS policy.

Yet immigrant crime appears to be mounting in the United States, and the INS has become a flash point for criticism. Immigrant felons make up more than 25% of the federal prison population and are its fastest-growing segment, according to a Senate report released in November.

“There are too many people trying to move the system too quickly,” said Dan Stein, executive director of the Federation for American Immigration Reform. “I can just visualize someone taking the oath of citizenship in court while being indicted in a room down the hall.”