Tight Reins Asked on Alien Marriages, Student Visas : Terrorism: FBI chief responds to World Trade Center bombing, killings outside CIA headquarters. They are cited as violence linked to ‘undesirables.’

FBI Director Louis J. Freeh is calling for tighter controls on student visas and alien marriages as part of an intensified effort to curb terrorism by aliens in the United States, it was learned Thursday.

Freeh made the recommendations to Deputy Atty. Gen. Jamie S. Gorelick, who asked him to review policies and practices on immigrants entering and leaving the United States in response to the World Trade Center bombing and killings outside CIA headquarters--both linked to aliens.

The recommendations, now under review by the Justice Department, also proposed strengthening investigative powers against suspected “undesirable aliens,” accelerating deportation appeal proceedings and limiting U.S. participation in a visa waiver pilot program under which 9 1/2 million foreigners entered the country in fiscal 1994.

“Aliens coming to the United States to engage in illegal conduct know that one of the easiest ways to enter and remain in the country is by requesting asylum,” Freeh told Gorelick. Under current procedures, they are asked either to post a small bond guaranteeing their appearance at a future hearing or are released on their own recognizance.

“Any legal procedures devised to address such aliens will fail unless they include provisions for the detention and removal of the alien,” Freeh said. “At present, too many of these aliens simply blend into American society and never return for their immigration hearing.”

Freeh was acting in his capacity as director of the Office of Investigative Agency Policies, a Justice Department unit created a year ago to end interagency conflicts between the FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration, Marshals Service and Immigration and Naturalization Service. He made the recommendation Sept. 26 in a four-page memorandum to Gorelick, which was then included in the Nov. 18 annual report of the new Justice Department office. A copy was provided to The Times.

A Justice Department official said that the Freeh proposals are part of a larger government-wide review of steps to prevent terrorism in the United States.

Freeh said that two categories of foreigners requiring “additional scrutiny” are those who enter the country on student visas but do not abide by the terms of the visa and those who “engage in ‘sham marriages’ with American citizens or permanent resident aliens” solely to become legal residents.

Immigrants seeking entry on either grounds “should undergo thorough scrutiny at the outset, as well as some form of continuing scrutiny,” Freeh said. Follow-up investigation of students would include reviewing their academic records.

“Obviously, the intent is not to harass an alien who lawfully opts either to study in this country or to marry an American,” Freeh said. “Instead, the intent is to ascertain which aliens are using these avenues as a means to remain in this country indefinitely . . . to engage in unlawful conduct. I recognize that certain legitimate privacy interests are implicated.”

In deportation or other proceedings against aliens, Freeh noted that government agencies do not use “protected or classified information,” including that from electronic eavesdropping and confidential sources, because existing law does not provide adequate means to protect that information. Its disclosure, he said, “could compromise ongoing investigations.”

He called for establishing a special closed court hearing on the use of such sensitive information at which only the government would appear. Freeh urged the Justice Department to reconsider “terrorist alien removal” legislation that would create a court to conduct “special removal hearings” against immigrants who take part in international terrorist activities.

That legislation, backed by the Administration, was passed by the Senate in a 1993 crime bill that did not become law.

Freeh criticized deportation appeal procedures on grounds that they often delay action for many years. “Failure to remove them swiftly from the United States simply exposes our country to needless risks,” he said.

Under present practices, some parts of an immigrant’s asylum file at the INS are not available to other law enforcement agencies, Freeh noted. “The FBI has noted that, in terrorist investigations, those unavailable portions of an alien’s asylum file could prove invaluable,” he said. “Indeed, those portions could provide sufficient leads to prevent the commission of further terrorist acts or crimes.”

He called for considering full or expanded disclosure of immigrant asylum files.

Freeh also endorsed giving terrorism investigators “roving authority” under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to intercept communications. That authority, now available in certain criminal investigations, would allow targeting an individual’s telephone conversations over any phone, rather than limiting surveillance to specific telephone numbers.

“Such authority would enhance the FBI’s ability to investigate aliens’ terrorist activities in the United States,” Freeh said.