Database: National Security Vetting Failures
The Center for Immigration Studies’ Vetting Failure Database presents the first known collection of preventable federal government vetting failures that enabled entries of foreign nationals who threatened and harmed American national interests and public safety. Its purpose is to be a constant reminder to the American public and to government employees in a position to effect remedies that they are obliged to do so as soon as practicable. Additionally, the database points America’s homeland security establishment and its congressional overseers to previously unidentified fail points in the highly complex immigration security screening array so that they may more ably block future entries of foreign threat actors.
The pool of cases selected for inclusion is far from comprehensive and should not be construed as reflecting either problem-set totality or representative weight in any given area. It is by necessity, rather, a compilation selected almost solely on the basis of public information availability to reverse-engineer cases for analysis and from which to draw reasonable conclusions that security failure most likely occurred.
Only vetting opportunities on or after the year 2008 are included. The year 2008 was chosen as the starting point on the assumption that the first series of 9/11 visa vetting reforms would have fully vested by then and, in essence, remain in current use. The year 2008 also was chosen because certain significant new process improvements were implemented that year.
View About the National Security Vetting Failures Database to read more about database inclusions and exclusions in detail. For suggestions on additions to the database, please e-mail [email protected].
Year of First Vetting* | Name | National Security Crime Type | Summary | Immigration Status Type | Opportunities Missed | Time from US Entry to Discovery | Case Outcome | Read More | Link to edit Content |
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Vetting Year
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Name Vallmoe Shqaire (aka Mahmad hadr Mahmad Shakir) |
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Summary Covered up Palestine Liberation Organization "Shabeda cell"/Israeli conviction for road-side bomb by using fake name |
Immigration Status Type B-2; Petition for Alien Relative Legal Permanent Residence; Naturalized Citizenship |
Opportunities Missed 1 |
Time from US Entry to Discovery 13 years, six months* |
Case Outcome Convicted 1/2019 for false statements; denaturalized |
Details
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Vetting Year
Time from US Entry to Discovery 13 years, six months* National Security Crime Type Terrorism-related, immigration fraud
Immigration Status Type B-2; Petition for Alien Relative Legal Permanent Residence; Naturalized Citizenship Agency Responsible for Failure State Department for B-1 visa; USICS for Legal Permanent Residence and Naturalized Citizneship Opportunities Missed 1
Criminal Charges False statements on citizenship application Case Outcome Convicted 1/2019 for false statements; denaturalized
Vallmoe Shqaire, a Palestinian with Jordanian citizenship who had been living in Los Angeles, Calif., entered the United States on a visitor's visa in 1999. It would not be discovered for nearly a decade that his real name is Mahmad hadr Mahmad Shakir and that the Israeli government had significant terrorism-related records about him. That same year, 1999, he paid $500 to a woman to marry him, a so-called "green card marriage" that didn't work out, although a second marriage attempt did. He was then able to apply for and successfully obtain lawful permanent residence and eventually obtained citizenship in 2008. Vetting failure occurred, evidently, because USCIS officers failed to cross-check fingerprints or other biometrics with Israeli intelligence for his 2008 security vetting, which would have turned up a trove. It wasn’t until 2013, and only because Shqaire had fallen under investigation for financial fraud, that the DOJ requested records from Israel under a mutual assistance agreement. The request yielded detailed Israeli court records and confessions as to Shqaire’s trusted role as a PLO guerilla fighter and operative during the 1980s who was convicted in 1991 of planting a bomb on a bus filled with civilians (it failed to explode). In 2010, Shqaire confessed his PLO involvement in a terrorist team known as the "Shabeda cell" and also to criminal activities to LA sheriff’s deputies investigating him for grand theft auto. To gain visas and legal status and citizenship in the many years prior to 2013, when he came under financial fraud investigation and the Israeli records were requested, Shqaire illegally omitted the disqualifying facts of his life history and his real birth name. Shqaire's work in the Shabeda cell also required that he train with arms and explosives and that he beat Arabs suspected of collaborating with Israel. One of those victims died of stab wounds. A USCIS officer interviewed Shqaire, looked over his application for legal residence, then approved it the same day, court records show. For the citizenship petition, a USCIS officer interviewed Shqaire, asked him to reiterate answers to some of the questions under oath (he lied), and about a month later that, too, was approved. CNN reported that the U.S. immigration officer who handled his citizenship application said she merely relied on him to "provide complete and truthful answers" about his criminal past and associations. Only if he had told the truth about his bombing conviction would she have requested further documentation. Naturally, Shqaire did not offer that personal history. A CNN story quoted a former U.S. immigration official involved in the vetting process in 2008 saying that a mandatory background check in place at the time should have detected the terrorism conviction, whether or not an applicant disclosed it. Left unclear was whether the check took place or, if so, was defeated by the false name. Regardless, a check of his fingerprints with the Israelis years later led to his undoing. |
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Vetting Year
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Name Enas Ibrahim |
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Summary Iraqi refugee omitted information about at least one and possibly two brothers-in-law involved in the 2005 kidnapping of U.S. contractor Roy Hallums; also committed wire fraud; failed to include previous name in natuarlization application |
Immigration Status Type Refugee classification; Lawful Permanent Residence; Naturalized Citizenship |
Opportunities Missed 2 |
Time from US Entry to Discovery 5 years, 5 months* |
Case Outcome Convicted 06/2017 for illegally procuring citizenship |
Details
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Vetting Year
Time from US Entry to Discovery 5 years, 5 months* National Security Crime Type Terrorism-related, immigration fraud
Immigration Status Type Refugee classification; Lawful Permanent Residence; Naturalized Citizenship Agency Responsible for Failure USCIS for Refugee classification Opportunities Missed 2
Criminal Charges Attempt to procure naturalization contrary to law Case Outcome Convicted 06/2017 for illegally procuring citizenship
Iraqi citizen Enas Ibrahim entered the United States as a refugee in 2008 with her husband and his brother. They claimed elaborate persecution stories involving victimhood at the hands of al-Qaeda in Iraq and settled in the Fairfax, Va., area. But USCIS security screeners based in Amman, Jordan, granted their provisional refugee petitions despite discoverable intelligence information from a U.S. military raid in 2005 that recovered Yousif Al-Mashhadani’s fingerprint inside an al-Qaeda bunker where kidnapped westerners were freed, including American contractor Roy Hallums, an FBI complaint affidavit much later revealed. USCIS reviewers in Jordan also missed other ties to the particularly murderous branch of al-Qaeda in Iraq. She, her husband Adil, and brother-in-law Yousif hid the existence of a third brother tied even more directly to the raided al-Qaeda bunker. The later FBI investigation in 2016 discovered that in 2004, that brother, Majid Al-Mashhadani, was working with al-Qaeda and helped his terrorist group kidnap Hallums, who was kept for nearly a year blindfolded in a underground torture bunker. When U.S. military forces freed Hallums and other captives in the 2005 raid, they arrested this Al-Mashhadani brother at the site. That brother was imprisoned for two years in Iraq, getting out at about the time the rest of his family was applying for U.S. refugee status in 2007 in next-door Jordan. Enas Ibrahim participated in family decisions to cover this up and to fabricate terrorist persecution stories to improve their odds of admission as refugees. (In an unrelated matter, Enas also was later found to have falsely overstated her income to qualify for a car loan in Virginia.) Ultimately, it was the U.S.-based FBI investigation that uncovered not only Yousif’s fingerprint match to the terrorist safe house but also the fact that the third brother, Majid, had been captured in the U.S. raid at the kidnapping lair. It was also the FBI investigation, rather than any routine security screening associated with the refugee or permanent residence applications, that discovered the family’s elaborate lies about having been victimized by terrorists in Iraq. Was Yousif an al-Qaeda operative who got into America as a refugee? Court records do not elaborate on the meaning behind the Yousif Al-Mashhadani fingerprint. But regardless of whether this refuge-granted brother was a terrorist operative, too, the investigation also found that both brothers, Yousif and Adil, as well as Enas Ibrahim, wittingly covered up their disqualifying relationships to the arrested kidnapper brother on at least two occasions. The first was during the 2007-2008 USCIS security screening for the provisional refugee applications in Iraq. A second opportunity passed when they secured their change-of-status applications in the United States for lawful permanent residence some months later in 2008, and a third came and went in May 2013 when the trio applied for citizenship. The FBI found the Yousif fingerprint match in a separate investigation six months later, in November 2013. The misses seemed particularly egregious in light of other information apparently at the fingertips of adjudicators. In his first refugee application, for instance, Hasan filled out a “Worldwide Refugee Admissions Family Tree” report in which he omitted the al-Qaeda Al Mashhadani brother. He also dropped his own “Al Mashhadani” family name as part of the ruse, keeping the alias permanently after they settled in Virginia. USCIS security screeners who used the family tree report for their approval apparently missed much discoverable derogatory information at their fingertips, judging from court records. For one, a fourth brother identified in court records only as “A.M.”, a ranking Iraqi government official who would have been listed in the family tree document, also applied for refugee status in 2007 and in August of that year provided all of the information about the terrorist brother and fully identified all of his other brothers to USCIS adjudicators. Information that all the brothers were biologically related (one therefore revealed as not listed in applications), nearly a year before Hasan’s application was granted, should have been available through basic fact-finding and would have enabled adjudicators to link them all and find the omission. Secondly, a fingerprint check of Yousif Al-Mashhadani likely was never conducted as required under post-9/11 security screening reforms. Otherwise, a fingerprint database check should have discovered his fingerprint had been collected from inside the bunker, flagged the refugee applicant as a likely terrorist operative as well, and doomed the initial applications of all of the family members. Third, the FBI in 2016 found that the persecution stories that she and both brothers initially provided to USCIS adjudicators were riddled with simple discrepancies that seemed easily discoverable. Under FBI questioning about these back-story discrepancies, all were forced to admit to making up the basic facts of their claims years after USCIS adjudicators apparently accepted them at face value. In short, domestic criminal investigations that followed the footsteps of immigration security screening – rather than the other way around – turned up the derogatory information necessary to reveal so many deceits. Enas was arrested in March 2017, after eight years of ineligible living inside the United States. She pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit immigration fraud, was sentenced to time served and submitted to deportation proceedings. |
Key & Definitions
Types of cases
Espionage-Related: Cases begun under the auspices of federal law enforcement agencies as potential espionage involving the theft of sensitive U.S. government information, political influence operations by agents of foreign governments, theft of proprietary U.S. economic property for proliferation into foreign nations, illegal exports of U.S. technologies or restricted military-use commodities, and counter-intelligence.
Human-Rights Violation Related: Cases begun under the auspices of federal law enforcement agencies responsible for investigating global atrocities and perpetrators of human rights violations and war crimes. These would include individuals suspected of conducting murder, genocide, torture and other forms of serious human rights abuses who are living within the United States.
Terrorism Related: Cases begun under the auspices of the FBI as illegal violent acts of terrorism intending to murder, maim or destroy property to affect social and policy change; material support furthering acts of terrorism by U.S.-designated banned groups or individuals such as providing financial, material, or physical assistance or any other assistance that advances the illegal causes of those groups or individuals; the collection, use or plans to use of weapons of mass destruction in the commission of terrorism acts.
Visas
A-2: Derivative benefit given to spouse or child of an A-1 visa holder, which is a nonimmigrant visa for diplomat or government official physically present in the United States on assignment for their national government. (U.S. Department of State)
Asylum: A protection against deportation granted to beneficiaries determined to have suffered persecution or fear that they will suffer persecution on the basis of their race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion (USCIS).
B-1: Nonimmigrant temporary business visitor participating in business activities of a commercial or professional nature (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service)
B-2: Nonimmigrant spouse and children of a B-1 temporary business visitor who is participating in business activities of a commercial or professional nature. (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service)
EB-5: Immigrant visa leading to lawful permanent residence (green cards) for foreign national entrepreneurs who invest capital in U.S.-based businesses that will employ U.S. citizens and residents. Part of the “immigrant Investor Program.” (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service)
Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA): An online electronic application system allowing approved citizens of 40 select nations to enter the United States and remain without a visa for up to 90 days.
F-1: Nonimmigrant students enrolled full-time in an academic educational program, language-training program, or vocational program at an accredited college, university, seminary, conservatory, academic high school, elementary school, or other academic institution or language training program, culminating in a degree, diploma or certificate. (U.S. Department of State)
F-2: Nonimmigrant dependents of F-1 student visa holders who are enrolled in an academic education program. (U.S. Department of State)
H1-B: Nonimmigrant specialty occupation worker visas requiring higher education degree or equivalency. This temporary visa requires sponsoring employers to file petitions with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and potentially expires when employer sponsorship ends. The duration is three years, extendable to six years after which the visa holder may need to reapply. (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service)
J-1: Nonimmigrant temporary cultural or scholarly exchange visas with participating countries often involving teachers, physicians, researchers, short-term scholars, advanced-degree students, interns and government visitors. (U.S. Department of State
L-1: Nonimmigrant visas for temporary intracompany transferees who work in managerial positions or have specialized knowledge. Holders typically work in executive positions in a company located outside the United States but are opening offices inside the United States. (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service)
LPR (Lawful Permanent Residence): Most commonly known as “green-card” holders, noncitizen immigrants lawfully authorized to live permanently within the United States, own property, receive public benefits, work authorization, financial assistance at public colleges or join the Armed Forces. Three broad classes cover foreign nationals seeking family reunification, or relief on economic and humanitarian bases. May apply to become U.S. citizens five years after LPR grant. (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services)
MAVNI (Military Accessions Vital to National Interest): Immigrant program leading to citizenship for foreign nationals who enlist in the U.S. Armed Forces for up to four years and who hold useful specialized critical skills such as language, cultural backgrounds, medical and nursing training. (U.S. Department of Defense)
Naturalized Citizenship: Process by which U.S. citizenship is granted to a lawful permanent resident after meeting requirements established by Congress in the Immigration and Nationality Act. Prerequisites include at least five years as a lawful permanent resident, “good moral character,” English language proficiency, test of U.S. history and government principles, physically present in the U.S. for at least 30 months and able to take an Oath of Allegiance. (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service)
Refugee: Immigrant status granted to applicants located outside the United States who can demonstrate persecution due to race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group. Those approved outside the United States are granted conditional Legal Permanent Residence. (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service
TPS (Temporary Protective Status): Nonimmigrant form of temporary residency and protection from removal bestowed by the Secretary of Homeland Security on foreign nationals who are already inside the United States whose home countries are regarded as unsafe for their returns. Eligible people without nationality, who last resided in the unsafe country, may also be granted TPS. Countries may be designated on grounds of ongoing armed conflict, environmental disaster or “extraordinary and temporary conditions.” The protection is renewable but not legally regarded as permanent and provides for work authorization and other benefits reserved for permanent legal residents. (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service)