T5 B64 Gao Visa Docs 1 Of 6 Fdr- 5-2-03 Gao Interview Re Ins Lookout Unit- Final Policy And Info On Visa Revocations 521

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Prepared by: Kate Brentzel Date Prepared: May 2, 2003 Reviewed by:

Job Code:320172

Record of Interview Title Purpose Contact Method Contact Place Contact Date Participants

Interview wi1C ] INS Lookout Unit To review final policy and data information on visa revocations In—person interview INS Lookout Unit; 1525 Wilson Blvd., Ste. 425 May 2, 2003 1 Cathy Muhletaler INJgf GAP: Kate Brentzel, Judy McCloskey

Comments/Remarks: We met with

and Cathy Muhletaler to ask them the following questions:

1. What is the mission of the Lookout Unit? What else do they do in addition to revocations?

that the main mission of the Lookout Unit is to prevent inadmissible aliens from entering Lthe UnitedJsaid States, whether they are criminals, terrorists, or some other type of inadmissible person. There are several specialized units within the Lookout Unit; for example, there is one unit that coordinates with State's TIPOFF program. 2. Does she have written policies/procedures on what to do when she receives notice of a revocation?

Jsaid that she does not have any written policies/procedures for handling revocations, although \e said t revocations should be put into NAILS the day they are received. 3. Does she have suggestions for improving the notification system between State and INS? (INS only received 152 out of 240 certificates). Does she think that sending the cables is reliable? (State included INS as addressees on 231 of the cables but only 116 reached the Lookout I Unit).

Jsaid that she receives cables from both posts overseas and from State Department in Washington. Some of the posts from overseas are very ambiguous. For example, she has received cables from Bogota which say that the post "intends to revoke" a visa. This does not indicate to her whether or not the visa was eventually revoked. It is also confusing when she receives cables from posts in which the post is requesting that State Department in Washington revoke a visa. In that situation, she does not know if the i revocation has happened yet and does not know if she should post the lookout. Jsaid that she receives from State either (1) the revocation certificate (which is faxed) or (2) the revocation cable (which are sometimes faxed, sometimes mailed directly to her, and sometimes mailed to main INS and then sent to her via intra-agency mail) or (3) both the faxed revocation certificate and a copy of the cable (through one of aforementioned means). She said that she would prefer to receive just the revocation certificate by fax; she is not as keen on the cables. She said that it would be best if State would have only one, uniform way of notifying her of revocations - she suggested either by fax or by email, and that perhaps State should keep a log of all notifications sent at their end.

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jsaid that she would also like State to clarify information on the revocation certificate and to I • inchide more information on the revocation certificates. For example, she requested of Jim Pritchitt at State that he put the last names on the revocation certificates in all capital letters because when an alien had four or five"names, she did not know which names were to be considered the first names and which considered t the last. She would also like State to add the passport number, the country of citizenship as well as the H country of birth, and the visa foil number and possibly information from the alien's visa application, so thattl INS would have information on his intended itinerary and address in the United States. V

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Jthat in several of the 240 cases we reviewed, the individuals' country of

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place of birth, buf| Jwas taking the place of birth and putting it into the country of citizenship fie on the IBIS lookout. We asked her if this error would make it difficult for an inspector at the port of entry to identify the person with the revoked visa. She said that, yes, the inspector could get it wrong. If the person's citizenship is listed as Mexico when his passport says Argentina, then the inspector might not assume that it's the same person. She said that if State included more data on its revocation certificates, then she could enter more information into the NAILS/IBIS lookout and this would not be a problem. 4. Does she think it would be a good idea to look up revocation cases in NIIS to determine if th \n was already in the United States and that she would have to notify investigators in BICE or State or FBI of this information? Would she have the resources to do this? Should \r unit be responsible for doing this? \\

; \yill be required to query her systems to determine if the individual already entered the United Stated. She said that she would not query NIIS to do this since data in NIIS is a few \f/ \d her supervisor hasthat justthe decided that will entered be put the intoUnited place.States When weeks old. She said best way to a tellprocedure if someonelike had this recently is she to look at "lane; checks" in IBIS (every time an alien is processed at a sea or air port of entry, the inspector's actions are recorded in IBIS. She said that while "lane checks" are good for information about an alien's most { >/ recent entry into the United States, that they rarely contain information about someone's departure. She • \ said th ince I\94s are not collected there.) Jwondered what the point of this new policy was since she does not think the INS can do ,"? anything with the individuals who have already entered the country since the revocation does not take effect until the person leaves the United States. We askedj_ jwhat she is supposed to do with the information once she determines that the person is in the country. She said that she would give it to BICE investigators but that she didn't see the point of giving it to them since she didn't think they cbuld do anything with the information. She said that often she and the BICE investigators do not even know wJjySiate revoked the visa at all; she did hot think it made sense to investigate the individuals only to find out that State revoked the visa on slim infbrmationAtA

5. Which bureau is the Lookout Unit located in? |^^^~^^^^H

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| |said that the Lookout Unit, since it is part of inspections, is in the Bureau of Customs ano Border,, Protection. \Jfv 6. State sent a cable to all its posts stating that on Aug 15, 2002 the VEVK revocation code for CLASS was created. When did IBIS start to accept VRVK?

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I \d that the VRVK code came "on-line" for IBIS in either late September or early October 2002 (that wasxthe earliest date that IBIS would pick up CLASS lookouts with the VRVK code in them). I Isaid that she plans to audit the VRVK soon because she thinks it is only since January or February of 2003 that she has seen State using the code. She said that in a recent meeting with officials from the Visa Office, State officials.suggested that they stop faxing certificates of revocation over because the VRVK code would mean that any revocation they entered into CLASS would automatically be uploaded into IBIS. She^aid that she tojd them that this was a bad idea since CLASS and NAILS only interface weekly and therefore ft might be possible for an alien with a revoked visa to enter the United States in the time period between when, the CLASS lookout was made and when it got uploaded into NAILS. (Auditor's note: in addition to tliie time lag; it would be problematic to rely only on CLASS lookouts for notification purposes because State" is hot consistently entering CLASS lookouts on revocation cases anyway. Our data shows that State neglected to make CLASS lookouts on the revocations in at least 64 of 240 cases). I

Isaid that prior to the creation of the VRVK code, she would enter revocation lookouts as D01 (a refusal code that had been in use for the last 10 years). Now she enters all revocation lookouts in NAILS/IBIS as 7. Previous to the creation of theVVRVK code, who was responsible at INS for deciding that IBIS would not accept P3Bs and 00 lookouts from State? Why was it decided that IBIS wouldn't accept P3B and 00?

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tsaid that we w6vild have to direct this question to IBIS program manager Valerie Isbell. She said that CLASS and IBIS codes have hot been changed for the past ten years. She said that it is not always J \l for INS

^to why the person is a possible terrorist. The lookout might say "call overseas for more information".1 | I Isaid that this is not information that the inspector at the port of entry can do much with. If it is 3pm Eastern Standard Time, the inspector cannot necessarily find anyone to answer the phone at the overseas post that put the lookout into CLASS.) [said that during his work at ports of entry as an inspector, he hated to see a CLASS lookout for that reason. As an inspector, he needed more information than just "possible terrorist. Call overseas" to deny someone entry. Bothj |and| ~|said that they thought State quasi-refusal lookouts were not actionable - that they frequently did not have enough derogatory information to back them up.] . [said that he thought State consular officers might put in quasi-refusal lookouts if they read that a certain individual in the newspaper, but that there might not be any more substantial information than that. Ms. Muhletaler commented that that is why the VRVK is such an important code. She said a revocation lookout is "golden" because it is very easy for the inspector to deny entry to someone who does not have a valid travel document; it is much harder to deny someone entry \e of a possible terrorism link if the lookout does not include any substantiating evidence. i She commented that INS inspectors are under a time-pressure to decide whether the alien should be i admitted or denied entry. However, if need be, she said thalt INS inspectors could hold aliens in the federal i inspection area at the port of entry for up to 72 hours. She said that until they are admitted, the burden of i proof is on the alien to prove he is not a terrorist, but once the alien has been admitted, the burden of proof \s on the U.S. government to prove he is a terrorist. I Igave us an example of a time when an INS inspector wanted to deny entry to what he thought was a suspected terrorist at a port of entry at lam Sunday morningf Jcalled Jim Pritchitt (from State) at lam in the morning to get a verbal revocation. Mr. Pritchitt verbally agreed to the revocation and Page 3

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said that he would have thfr actual revocation certificate signed on Monday morning but that he would backdate it for Sunday morningj |then .told the inspector at the POE to consider the visa revoked and that he could turn the alien around at the borderj >vas upset that, when the paper revocation finally arrived from State, Mr. Pritchitt had not backdated it to Sunday morning; thus the alien's visa was not actually revoked when he was turned around at the border and what INS had done with not legal. | \paid that it could be confusing for inspectors at the ports of entry if State issues a new visa to an individual after a revocation. 8. We asked) weeks prior. I

|a range of questions about the data that she had provided us with a few

paid that although her unit makes the entry into NAILS, that NAILS interfaces with IBIS at midnight every night, so therefore the IBIS printouts that she gave us are synonymous with the NAILS entry She could not pull up the IBIS entry with the NAILS entry. We asked] labout several codes that we saw in the NIIS printouts. She said that DT = detained at inspection DE = deferred inspection; the alien was sent to secondary or told to wait in the inspection area because the inspector wanted to get more information before making a decision to admit him or not - court records, for example. WD = the alien withdrew his application to entry the United States. This reflects situations in which the inspector sees that the visa has been cancelled and tells the alien that he can withdraw his application to enter. We had seen the codes DX and UU but she did not know what these codes were. We noted that in several of the 240 cases, the CLASS records that we received from State showed that various individuals had been intercepted or that there were ordered removals for people. We asked her why the IBIS and NIIS printouts she gave us did not contain this information. She said that this was because we had only asked her for the revocation lookouts; therefore some of these other actions were not reflected in those printouts. She said that if we saw an INS record in CLASS that showed an ordered removal, for example, that we should assume that that is what occurred. We asked her why in case #164 the alien was admitted into the country on December 28,2001 even though there was a 3B terrorism lookout on him dated December 20, 2001. She said that even though there was a lookout on him, the lookout is not always enough information for the inspector to deny entry. She also said that he arrived in the United States on December 27 but was not admitted until December 28, indicating that some deliberation did take place. She noted that a visa revocation on the individual did not occur until February 2002.

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9/11 Personal Privacy 'RaThenn^Breritzel - VRVK Code and Process

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Date: Subject:

5/21/03 8:37AM VRVK Code and Process

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Katherine Brentzel - 01text-plain.txt

Kate; As discussed yesterday, you had mentioned in earlier meetings that the current DOS procedure and process for the visa revocations should be working better and that most of our research was highlighting past problems. The example of the process still not being improved is being faxed to your office, as requested, and is detailed below: On May 6, 2003, INS intercepted the subject alien at a port of entry. He was the subject of a TIPOFF lookout, which you are familiar with. INR/TIPOFF had a hard copy of the subject's visa revocation which was signed on March 21, 2003. When I queried the TECS/IBIS system the revocation was not in the database, nor does the Lookout Unit have any record of receiving a hard copy. INR faxed the revocation to the Lookout Unit and we refused the alien's entry into the United States. In summary, nothing has changed despite the GAO Audit and the same three issues are still problematic: 1) the format of the "Letter of Revocation" has not changed, so it is difficult to tell the last name and the person's citizenship, nor is other identifying information being provided such as passport number and visa information; 2) the overall procedure of getting the revocations to the Lookout Unit has not changed; we still receive various cables, faxes, etc.. 3) CLASS does not seem to by uploading the VRVK code to the TECS/IBIS real-time interface and the weekly NAILS interface, which means that DOS could still be using an incorrect visa revocation code. Lisa Custer

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