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Technology Stocks : Identix (IDNX) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: steve who wrote (25597)	3/13/2004 8:49:51 PM
From: steve	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 26039

IDENT/IAFIS: The Batres Case and the Status of the Integration Project March 2004 Office of the Inspector General -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I. INTRODUCTION In January 2002, Border Patrol agents in the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) apprehended Mexican citizen Victor Manual Batres (Batres) twice within two days as he crossed the border from Mexico into the United States. Only during his second apprehension did the agents learn, through a check of INS databases, that a warrant had been issued for Batres' arrest in Oregon for possession of dangerous drugs. When contacted by the Border Patrol, the Oregon authorities declined to seek Batres' extradition to Oregon on the warrant. As a result, the Border Patrol returned Batres to Mexico. Yet, during both apprehensions Border Patrol agents never queried Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) databases for criminal information on Batres. Had they done so, the databases would have showed that Batres had a significant criminal history in the United States, including several aggravated felony convictions and at least one prior deportation from the United States. If the agents had learned of this criminal history and prior deportation, under Border Patrol policies they should have detained Batres for prosecution for the felony offense of Reentry After Deportation. This felony offense is easily proven and generally carries a substantial prison term for individuals such as Batres with prior aggravated felonies and deportations. Consequently, Batres likely would have been incarcerated rather than being voluntarily returned to Mexico. Instead, after his voluntary return to Mexico, Batres illegally reentered the United States and traveled to Oregon September 2002 where he brutally raped two Catholic nuns, resulting in the death of one of the nuns. Batres was arrested, pled guilty to murder and rape, and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The Batres case was reminiscent of a 1999 case in which the Border Patrol voluntarily returned Rafael Resendez-Ramirez to Mexico, unaware that the FBI and local authorities had outstanding arrest warrants for him for murder and that he had a significant criminal history. Shortly after Resendez's voluntary return to Mexico, he illegally reentered the United States and committed four more murders before he surrendered to law enforcement authorities.1 In the Resendez case, we found that INS employees had not been trained adequately on IDENT, the INS's automated fingerprint system, and had failed to put in IDENT a lookout for Resendez when the FBI and local authorities informed them about his outstanding warrant. Because IDENT and IAFIS, the FBI's separate automated fingerprint identification system, were not linked, the Border Patrol officers who detained Resendez did not know he was wanted for murder and released him, which allowed Resendez to commit several more murders.2 The INS's database, called IDENT, began operating in 1994.3 The FBI's database, known as IAFIS, began operating in 1999. In several reports over the past few years, however, the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) has reported extensively on the efforts to integrate these databases and found that integration has been moving slowly and still may take years to fully accomplish.4 The Batres and Resendez cases both demonstrated the urgent need to integrate the separate FBI and INS automated fingerprint identification databases. In these two cases, had the immigration agents been made aware of the information in the FBI databases, both Batres and Resendez would have been detained and likely incarcerated instead of being voluntarily returned to Mexico, where they subsequently were able to return to the United States and commit additional crimes. The OIG began its investigation of the INS's handling of the Batres case when the INS was still part of the Department of Justice (DOJ). This report summarizes the results of the OIG's investigation as well as the status of the DOJ's and the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) efforts to integrate IDENT and IAFIS. As the Batres case tragically demonstrated again, an urgent need continues to exist to integrate the IDENT and IAFIS databases as expeditiously as possible. Yet, the DOJ Justice Management Division's (JMD) September 2003 response to the OIG's latest recommendations for integration raises continued concerns about the pace of integration. The response indicates that the March 1, 2003, transfer of the INS from the DOJ to DHS, the reassignment of key INS employees who were involved in the integration effort, and continued budgetary hurdles could result in additional delay in the integration efforts. In this report, we summarize the history of IDENT and IAFIS, discuss how each system operates, describe early efforts to merge the systems, and examine the reasons for the delay of those efforts. The report then summarizes the Resendez case in 1999 and how that case generated a greater impetus to merge the two systems. The report also summarizes several OIG reviews that emphasized the need for integration of the two databases. (cont)