Foreign terrorists still can evade fingerprint checks

AP ^ | June 22, 2003 | CURT ANDERSON

[sarcasm]

WASHINGTON--Foreign terrorists and criminals could continue to slip across U.S. borders undetected because a project to combine FBI and immigration fingerprint records is running two years behind schedule, a Justice Department report says.

Until the project is finished, immigration, FBI and other law enforcement agencies will not be able to simultaneously check fingerprint records and some foreigners ''who should be detained will not be,'' said the report Friday by Glenn A. Fine, the Justice Department's inspector general.

''The slow progress of the integration project represents an unacceptable risk to public safety and national security,'' Fine wrote.

The delays are particularly troubling, the report said, because interim changes have led to fingerprint matches of 4,820 foreigners suspected of or wanted for criminal offenses since January 2002. Of those, 50 were being sought for murder.

FBI Director Robert Mueller, asked Friday about the report at a National Press Club appearance, said it is difficult to merge separate systems and come up with common ways to enter information.

''There are always problems you have in ensuring compatibility. We are working through that now,'' Mueller said.

The project, begun in 1999, is not expected to be finished until at least 2009, about two years later than originally thought. An initial, less comprehensive version was to have come online this spring, but is also delayed until at least December.

One reason is that after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, resources and manpower were diverted to build a stricter border entry and exit registration system.

Even so, the report concluded that the Justice Department had not come up with a new schedule for completing the work and hadn't adequately planned for the takeover of immigration duties by the new Department of Homeland Security.

Justice officials, the report said, now face ''a major challenge'' in attempting to run the project between the two agencies. The agency ''must act aggressively to prevent further delays,'' the report added.

As of this April, the immigration database included about 152,200 ''wants and warrants'' fingerprints records for likely foreigners, which refer to people believed to be neither U.S. citizens nor legal residents being sought on outstanding serious felonies or misdemeanors.

There were a total of 331,700 fingerprint records in the combined database, far short of the ultimate goal of merging 40 million FBI fingerprint records with 4 million held by immigration officials so they can be accessed by a range of federal, state and local agencies, the report found.

In a written response, Paul Corts, assistant attorney general for administration, said the project is being done ''as expeditiously as possible'' and rejected implications that it has been in limbo. He said software for the project has been vastly improved, for example.

''Significant progress has been made,'' Corts said.