Fort Dix Six: Where Things Stand

Hot Air sums up a Newsweek article about the status of the Duka brothers in pithy fashion - the INS did nothing about the three illegal aliens for 16 years.

From the Newsweek article:

In 1989, federal immigration records indicate, the Duka brothers' father contacted U.S. immigration authorities seeking to regularize the status of several members of the family—including Dritan, Eljvir and Shain—through a claim of asylum, said the source familiar with the family's immigration history. Further details of the Duka family’s asylum claim could not be immediately determined. But to obtain asylum in the United States, foreigners must usually demonstrate to immigration authorities that they have a well-founded fear of being persecuted—usually for religious or political reasons—if they were to return to their home countries.

As a result, for nearly two decades, American authorities were aware that members of the family were inside the United States, and that they had probably come here illegally. While the asylum application was under consideration, the government effectively suspended any effort to deport family members as illegal aliens, the source familiar with their immigration history said.

After the Duka’s filed the asylum application, it languished for 16 years in the bowels of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), the notoriously inefficient Justice Department agency which was responsible for processing—and, where appropriate, deporting—immigrants to the United States. (After 9/11, the agency was absorbed by Homeland Security). A U.S. official familiar with immigration procedures said that the asylum claim may have bogged down because Congress had limited the number of asylum-seekers who could be granted permanent resident status to 10,000 a year. The official said this limitation meant that even if asylum seekers' claims of persecution were legitimate, waits of 16 years or more for a green card were not unusual.

However, another official familiar with the Duka case history said that the family asylum claim got stuck for 16 years at INS because of a bureaucratic paperwork backlog of more than 100,000 asylum applications. The official said asylum claims routinely sat in “filing cabinets” for a decade or more.

And yet we're supposed to believe that any new immigration plan will work out better than any prior immigration/amnesty plan? Fat chance of that happening and more cases will fall through the cracks.

The federal government has done an extremely poor job of securing US borders over the years, and this case once again highlights the problems with border control and knowing who has actually entered the country, along with the problems of dealing with those who have already entered the country illegally. The resources simply aren't there to deal with the problem effectively.

Meanwhile, one of the Fort Dix six is seeking to be released on bail because he claims that he wasn't really into all aspects of the plot. He admits that he was helping arm the others, but was trying to discourage them from killing.

One of the six defendants in the foiled Fort Dix terror plot confessed to investigators that he helped arm the other suspects, but said he tried to talk them out of an attack, according to court papers filed yesterday by federal prosecutors.

Agron Abdullahu said that he told several of his co-defendants that they could not kill civilians under the teachings of Islam.

"You could attack a military base," one of them replied.

It would be crazy to do so, Abdullahu told them, saying they needed to think about their children.

Then came another reply: they would find a way to mount the attack and Allah would find a way to care for their families.

Prosecutors detailed the discussion in court papers as they face the first significant challenge to their high-profile terrorism case today during Abdullahu's bail hearing in federal District Court in Camden.

Abdullahu, 24, told investigators the exchange was with the Duka brothers -- Shain, Eljvir and Dritan -- though he couldn't remember which one replied to him, according to prosecutors.

Abdullahu's attorneys are seeking his release on bail to home confinement. Prosecutors want him detained, and argued that his conversation with the Duka brothers shows that Abdullahu was well aware of the group's "propensity for violence."

Despite that knowledge, they said, he supplied them with "high-powered, dangerous weapons," including a shotgun, two semi-automatic rifles and a 9-mm handgun. He also trained them in their use and secretly stashed the guns, authorities said.

I wonder if the New York Times is still groping for a link to Islam, even as the various defendants raise the issue in their own pleadings and papers before the court.

I don't think this is as much of a challenge to the prosecution as the article claims, as it actually butresses much of what the prosecution has claimed all along. Abdullahu admits to assisting to arm the others in preparing to attack Fort Dix or other installations, and his calls not to kill people fall on deaf ears. That would suggest that the others were already hardened in their beliefs to kill Americans as part of the jihad.

Indeed the article notes what the prosecutors have also found in the course of the investigation:

Prosecutors also disclosed for the first time that their 15-month investigation revealed that the group recruited others to "radical Islamic theology." They did not say Abdullahu shared those beliefs.

They were spreading their violent ideology. Once again, one has to wonder the whereabouts of the other four people seen on a video that got a Circuit City employee to call the authorities because of the disturbing information he saw.

Apparently more people are taking the phrase "If you see something, say something" to heart. More tips are coming in to law enforcement since the Fort Dix plot broke.

Calls to the state's counterterrorism tip line more than doubled in the week since authorities foiled a plot to massacre soldiers at Fort Dix.

The tip line received 65 calls from May 8-14, the week beginning the day after authorities arrested six men they believe were conspiring to kill military personnel at the post. The 65 tips phoned in to authorities that week is more than twice the 30 calls to the tip line May 1-7, the week before the plot was uncovered.

"We run them all down," Homeland Security and Preparedness Director Richard Canas said. "The ones that have merit get referred to the FBI."

It was just such a tip — from vigilant store clerks — that led to the arrests in the Fort Dix case. The FBI said it learned of the young Muslims who are accused of plotting the massacre after workers from a Circuit City store became alarmed at the content of a video one of the suspects brought in for dubbing onto a DVD in January 2006.