Fingerprint Destruction Was Proper, INS Declares

Disputing allegations of wrongdoing, U.S. immigration authorities said Thursday that the fingerprint records of some 4,000 citizenship applicants were properly destroyed last month because the documents were illegible or incomplete.

“I’m more convinced than ever that there was no impropriety in these cases,” said Rosemary Melville, deputy district director in Los Angeles for the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service.

But Kathy Bell, the INS clerk in Los Angeles whose public allegations of wrongdoing have created a furor at the agency, rejected the official explanation late Thursday as a “cover-up.”

Federal officials began investigating the dispute after Bell went public with charges that five crates containing the fingerprints of 4,000 to 6,000 citizenship applicants were destroyed before the documents were forwarded to the FBI for legally mandated background checks. Bell said the fingerprint cards in the crates were not faulty, and charged that the action was part of a management-ordered expediting of citizenship applications.

By law, new citizenship applicants must have their fingerprints examined by the FBI for criminal background checks. Certain convicted criminals are barred from becoming citizens.

The issue is especially sensitive at the moment because Republicans in the House of Representatives have publicly accused the INS of improperly granting citizenship to thousands of criminals in an effort to bolster Democratic voting ranks. A House subcommittee investigating the matter is reviewing statements from Bell and others.

The Clinton administration has rejected the charges as absurd. “There’s no legitimacy to any of these allegations,” said INS spokesman Eric Andrus in Washington.

The election-year allegations have arisen as an unprecedented number of immigrants are taking the citizenship oath. The INS anticipates naturalizing a record 1.1 million people this year, more than one-quarter of them processed through Los Angeles.

On Thursday, following published reports of Bell’s allegations, Melville confirmed that the fingerprint cards in question were tossed in the trash. But the INS official said that action was taken properly after the documents were pulled from applications because the cards did not meet FBI specifications.

The print samples, Melville said, had various irregularities: The prints themselves were incomplete or misaligned, or the documents lacked biographical and other vital identifying information. Affected applicants were contacted and directed to supply new samples, Melville said. The illegible fingerprints were stored in crates in an INS office in Los Angeles until they were discarded.

“I’m very comfortable with the fact that there is integrity in the system,” Melville said.

Nonetheless, she said, the matter was forwarded to the Office of the Inspector General, an internal oversight agency at the Justice Department. The INS is part of that department.