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Border Security Falls Short In Audit U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers failed to stop roughly 1 in 10 illegal immigrants and serious drug and weapons violators from entering the United States through airports and official land border crossings last year, according to a new congressional review. While screeners turned back more than 200,000 foreigners in 2006, random audits indicate that they missed another 20,000 violators. The Government Accountability Office, Congress's audit arm, blamed failures by officers and supervisors along with inadequate training and staffing. A Customs and Border Protection study this summer concluded that the agency needs 1,600 to 4,000 more officers and agricultural specialists at the nation's air, land and sea ports, or a boost of 7 to 25 percent, the GAO reported. The federal government has embarked on a costly buildup to guard remote stretches of the U.S.-Mexico border, doubling the Border Patrol ranks to 18,000 agents between 2000 and 2008, planning to add 570 miles of fencing and vehicle barriers and 200 miles of sensors by then, and boosting spending on border security to $9 billion last year. But experts say as many as half of the United States' estimated 12 million illegal immigrants entered the country not by sneaking across the border but by evading detection at the 326 legal ports of entry or by overstaying visas....
Border chief in TB row to retire The federal official in charge of the El Paso, Texas, border crossing — where a Mexican national with a highly contagious form of tuberculosis was allowed to enter the U.S. 76 times since August 2006 — has announced his retirement. Luis Garcia, director of field operations in El Paso, said his retirement is not related to a Senate inquiry as to how Amado Isidro Armendariz Amaya traveled more than 20 times into the U.S. after his illness was discovered by health authorities on April 16. Mr. Garcia, who announced his retirement in a memo to employees on Oct. 31, recently has faced scrutiny over border policies that include limited screening at checkpoints and inadequate screening of some immigrants who apply for extended-stay visas....
Homeland Security grants used to buy gym gear Several South Florida fire departments have used Department of Homeland Security grants administered by the Federal Emergency Management Agency to beef up their gyms. And it's all legal. According to a report Monday by The Miami Herald partner WFOR-CBS4, fire departments in Hialeah, Fort Lauderdale, Broward County and Pompano Beach have used a portion of $660,000 in Fire Act Grants awarded between 2002 and 2006 to buy treadmills, recumbent bikes and other exercise equipment. FEMA's guidelines allow such measures. Hialeah Fire Rescue used $88,083 from a 2002 grant to buy seven step machines, seven treadmills and a Nautilus weight machine. Fort Lauderdale firefighters were aided with a $292,930 grant by FEMA in 2003. With at least part of that money they bought weight machines, treadmills and exercise equipment....
AT&T gave feds access to all Web, phone traffic, ex-tech says His first inkling that something was amiss came in summer 2002, when he opened the door to admit a visitor from the National Security Agency (NSA) to an AT&T office in San Francisco. "What the heck is the NSA doing here?" Mark Klein, a former AT&T technician, said he asked himself. A year or so later, he stumbled upon documents that, he said, show the agency gained access to massive amounts of e-mail, Web search and other Internet records of more than a dozen global and regional telecom providers. AT&T allowed the agency to hook into its network and, according to Klein, many of the other telecom companies probably knew nothing about it. Klein will be on Capitol Hill today to share his story in the hope it will persuade Congress not to grant legal immunity to telecommunications firms that helped the government in its warrantless anti-terrorism efforts....