Michael Cutler -- Counterfeited Identity Papers Gravely Endanger US National Security

An article appeared in yesterday's edition of the Rocky Mountain News. Also a press release was issued by ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) on June 19, 2006 that provides significant background information about the investigation into the activities of the counterfeiters. Both articles are extremely important to consider for a number of reasons.

First of all, it chronicles the successful prosecution of a major player in the underground fraud document "industry." Certainly such successes are important and the members of the law enforcement community who were responsible for this success should be extremely proud of their accomplishments. The citizens of our nation should also be proud of the success this case represents.

Next I want you to consider that once again there are many politicians who are attempting to ram "Comprehensive Immigration Reform" through the system to provide the millions of illegal aliens in our country with lawful status and place them on the road to United States citizenship.

You may well wonder why the article about the arrest of major player involved in cranking out thousands of counterfeit identity documents is relevant to amnesty for millions of illegal aliens, so I will explain this.

There are many reasons that I am adamantly opposed to any sort of mass amnesty program for aliens whose presence in our country represents a violation of our nation's laws. First and foremost is the issue of our government's absolute inability to properly identify these millions of illegal aliens. We do not know their names or their true nationalities. We therefore don't have a reliable way of knowing about their possible criminal histories or possible involvement with criminal or terrorist organizations. We therefore do not know who they are affiliated with or what their true purposes might have been when they entered our country by circumventing the inspections process that is designed to keep foreign nationals out of our country whose presence in our country is contrary to the best interests of our nation and our citizens.

Some of these aliens might simply have entered the United States intent on securing illegal employment so that they could send money back to their home country. Others might be fugitives from justice in other countries who are wanted for committing serious and perhaps, heinous, crimes.

Others may have come to the United States to ply their trades as members of violent gangs or as "free lance" criminals. Some may belong to terrorist organizations.

You may think that there are only a relative handful of terrorists potentially living in the United States. If this is your belief, I would suggest that you consider how to define a "terrorist."

If you ask some folks what they think a member of the United States Air Force does at work, they might respond that most members of the Air Force are probably pilots They would be wrong. Only a very small percentage of the members of the Air Force actually fly airplanes or even ever set foot in a cockpit. The majority of those who wear the Air Force uniform have supporting jobs.

Think about how few astronauts NASA employs and how many thousands of people have supporting jobs to build, service and assemble various spacecraft and play a major supporting role for those brave pilots of the Air Force or the valiant astronauts who soar into space at NASA. Similarly, terrorists are not only the individuals who hijack airplanes or set off bombs.

Most people who are associated with terrorist organizations play vital but supporting roles. They commit a wide variety of crimes to raise funds for terrorist organizations. They may sell drugs, raise money through seemingly benevolent charities that are actually "fronts" for terrorist organizations.

Some terrorists engage in various fraud schemes which, at times, may even cost people their lives or injure them irreparably. Many years ago I assisted members of the NYPD, the New York City Fire Department and special agents of ATF in investigating a number of Palestinians who had come to the United States both legally and illegally to raise funds for the PLO. They bought "bodegas" (small grocery stores) to engage in massive coupon fraud and then, when they tired of that activity or feared that they might be discovered, they set their stores on fire and sent the insurance money back to Yassir Arafat. Many people who lived in the apartments above and near those stores were trapped in those fires. Some of those victims died and others probably wish they had died because they suffered terrible injuries and were left horrifically disfigured and suffered physical pain beyond description.

That money was used to buy weapons and to pay for logistics such as airline tickets, safe houses, false identity documents (such as those that the gang discussed in the news article) and other necessities.

The point is that there is a small army of terrorist supporters who work part time in support of the missions of terrorist organizations serving in many roles in many countries around the world, including right here in the United States. Those that don't commit overt crimes may be involved in providing a "safe house," conducting surveillance at potential locations of attacks and may be involved in recruiting new members.

The problem that law enforcement has is to accurately identify people that may come under investigation. The simple question, "What is your name" may not be such a simple question, after all. That is fingerprints are used to properly identify people. The simple truth is that criminals use numerous aliases in order to confuse and confound law enforcement authorities.

While the article focused on the criminals who cranked out the documents, nothing was said about their thousands of customers, people you may well encounter in your daily life no matter where you are. As you read the news report and the ICE press release, you will see just how widespread this operation was.

One of the points not noted in the article but that I can tell you, based on my personal experience as a former INS special agent, is that fraud document vendors often also sell bogus utility bills and rent receipts to help criminals and others to create a credible fictitious identity for their customers.

In fact, I stumbled upon such an operation during an investigation in which I assisted DEA agents in New Jersey shortly before I ended my career. Those document vendors provided false driver's licenses, photo-substituted United States passports and other such documents. Additionally, they furnished high-quality gas and electric bills in whatever name, address or dates their customers ordered!

If there was a massive amnesty program the only thing that our government could do to attempt to deal with false identities and criminals is to run the applicant's claimed name and fingerprints through a computer database. If they have never been arrested in the United States, and they use a false name, the computer would show "No Hit" and USCIS would issue a temporary identity document within a day or two.

This is the program that the politicians talk about when they say that all applications will be subject to "criminal checks."

This would mean that a criminal or terrorist could, for example, walk into an office of USCIS and state that his name was "John Doe," "Donald Duck" or any other name he or she likes. Since the name is false it would come up as no record and that person would be able to therefore assume that identity.

That document would enable the bearer to immediately apply for a Social Security Card, a driver's license and other such documents. The USCIS-issued document is therefore known as a "breeder document."

By enabling illegal aliens whose identities cannot be verified with official identity documents, they are being provided with a level of credibility to which they are not entitled. The only thing worse than no security is false security. Such a program would have the potential to create that false security on a massive scale!

The last line of the news story shows how false identity documents could be similarly used as a breeder document to acquire legitimate identity documents that could be used by illegal aliens in support of an application for amnesty under an assumed identity.

While the arrest of the individuals who were involved in this massive fraud ring represents an important victory, I can assure you that there are many other fraud document vendors "out there" plying their trade and endangering our national security.

The only way to even begin to get a handle on such applications would require that each application be subject to a field investigation that would require investigators to head out into the street and knock on doors and ask people if they could identity the photo of the applicant and under what name they might know that person.

Even this process is far from perfect, but it would be helpful. Here is the problem: It is believed that there are any where from ten million to twenty million illegal aliens currently living in our country, but no one knows with any certainty, what the real number is. Last year's Comprehensive Immigration Reform bill would have required that 100,000 applications for amnesty would have to have been processed each and every day! This is reminiscent of the episode of "I Love Lucy" in which she and her comedy side-kick Ethel worked in a bonbon factory trying to wrap the little morsels of candy. Initially they did a pretty good job, until the conveyor belt was speeded up to warp speed! They then tried to eat the candy and shove them down their clothes, but to no avail!

It was one of the most memorable and hilarious episodes in the history of television. Where the applications for amnesty and other immigration benefits are concerned, however, there is no humor to be found in a system that would force adjudicators to simply rubber stamp applications to keep pace with the onslaught of applications!

Now, here is something else to consider: If we are unable to properly identify those illegal aliens who might apply for amnesty, how would we be able to determine when they really entered the United States?

Again, a field investigation might do that job with a fair level of accuracy. Simply reviewing utility bills would be virtually meaningless!

Additionally, how would the adjudicators deal with an illegal alien who claimed to have paid the utility bills for his apartment without changing the name on the bills but rather continued to pay the bills under the previous tenant's name?

With such chaos, what would prevent millions of additional illegal aliens from running our nation's borders long after the cut off date (perhaps even after an amnesty would be implemented) and then claiming to have been present in the United States for many more years than they were actually here?

If you believe that this possibility is far-fetched, consider this: During the period that Senator Kennedy was pushing for the 1986 Amnesty, he and other proponents of that travesty claimed that some 1.1 million illegal aliens would be "brought out of the shadows."

When the dust settled, somewhere between 3.5 million and 4 million applications had been adjudicated. Did they misestimate the number of illegal aliens who were present or did nearly 3 million additional illegal aliens run our nation's borders after the amnesty program was up and running?

You should also realize that a number of the terrorists who attacked our nation in 1993 at the CIA and at the World Trade Center had committed immigration fraud to enter our country and/or embed themselves in our country. The same can be said of the 19 terrorists who attacked our nation on 9/11.

Meanwhile, as I have noted on many other occasions, USCIS claimed to have lost some 111,000 immigration files relating to aliens seeking a variety of immigration benefits including some 30,000 who applied for naturalization. Believe it or not, all of those applications were adjudicated without their relating files!

Here is the link to the GAO report that was issued just over 5 years after the terrorists attacks of 9/11, in October 2006, about that outrageous and utterly unacceptable example of galactic incompetence.

This is why I came to refer to the Comprehensive Immigration Reform bill that nearly passed the Senate last year as the "Terrorist Assistance and Facilitation Act of 2007." You can find a copy of a commentary entitled, "Immigration bill a 'No go'" that I wrote for the Washington Times that was published on June 22, 2007.

The concept of "date rape" deals with the guy who refuses to take "No" for an answer. That violation of his female companion is a felony.

How many times do the people of the United States have to say "No" before our supposed political representatives stop pushing their disastrous program on us, We the People?

The politicians and the open borders advocates know damned well that the vast majority of the citizens of this nation are absolutely opposed to Comprehensive Immigration Reform. Their newest tactic is to now refer to that disastrous program as "CIR" which is simply the initials of the bill that failed last year!

If a private company attempted to pull such a stunt they could be taken to court for attempting to conduct a deceptive business practice!

We have been told that we need an economic stimulus package to get our economy moving. Here is my question, how is providing millions of illegal aliens with an opportunity for United States citizenship supposed to help our economy at a time when there are far too jobs to go around as it now stands?

How can we pump money into the economy, at great expense to those of us who pay taxes and our children, and their children, while be continue to employ huge numbers of foreign workers whose goal is to send billions of dollars from the United States back to their home countries?

You may not know this, but during the Great Depression, many novel ideas were tried out to attempt to get as many American workers as possible onto the payrolls. This is how the 40 work week came about. No one was allowed to work more than 40 hours- this often required additional people be hired, rather than pay some workers overtime while other Americans had no jobs!

Our nation is often referred to as being a nation of immigrants, however, the difference between and immigrant and an illegal aliens is comparable to the difference between a houseguest and a burglar!

When a person is myopic (near sighted) and fails to wear his (her) glasses, he may walk into a wall. When our government is myopic, our nation may hit the wall with horrific results!!

The time has come for the government of the United States to act in a manner consistent with the best interests of We the People!

Good citizenship does not end at the voting booth but it simply begins there. In order for our representative democracy to represent us, we need to communicate with our elected representatives to let them know in clear and unequivocal terms what we want.

I implore you to get involved!

Subscribe to the NewsWithViews Daily News Alerts!

If you like this commentary, I urge you to forward it to as many people as you can and also to your elected representatives.

We live in a perilous world and in a perilous era. The survival of our nation and the lives of our citizens hang in the balance

This is neither a Conservative issue, nor is it a Liberal issue- simply stated, this is most certainly an AMERICAN issue!

Michael W. Cutler graduated from Brooklyn College of the City University of New York in 1971 with a B.A. in Communications Arts and Sciences. Mr. Cutler began working for the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) in October 1971 when he entered on duty as an Immigration Inspector assigned to John F. Kennedy International Airport. In August 1975 he became a Criminal Investigator (Special Agent) for the INS at NYC.

He rotated through virtually every squad in the Investigations Branch. From 1988 until 1991 he was assigned as the INS representative to the Unified Intelligence Division (UID) of the DEA in New York. In 1991 he was promoted to the position of Senior Special Agent and was assigned to the Organized Crime, Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF) which required that he work with members of other law enforcement agencies including the FBI, DEA, ATF, U.S. Customs and local and state police as well as law enforcement organizations of other countries including Israel, Canada, Great Britain and Japan, to conduct investigations of aliens involved in major drug trafficking organizations. He retired from the INS in February 2002, after a career that spanned some 30 years.

Finally, Michael Cutler has appeared on numerous television and radio programs including Lou Dobbs, Fox News, MSNBC and many other television and radio news-oriented programs to discuss the enforcement of immigration laws.