Additionally, the new law increases penalties for alien smuggling and document fraud and grants the INS wiretap authority to investigate alien smuggling, document fraud, citizenship fraud and passport fraud. Speedy detection of document and benefits fraud is important because such fraud has been shown to have a connection to other criminal activity. For example, Mir Aimal Kasi, the Pakistani terrorist recently convicted for killing two CIA employees outside CIA headquarters in 1993, submitted false documentation to obtain a document that authorized him to work in the United States. Had this fraud been detected sooner, he might have been removed from the country and his crimes prevented. In addition, suspected Russian organized crime figures, who have benefited from fraudulent visa petitions for intracompany transfers, also have been linked to benefit fraud and other criminal activity made possible by their unlawful entry into the United States.
Special emphasis is required to keep criminal aliens off our streets.
Criminal aliens include aliens convicted of U.S. crimes as well as all deportees convicted of reentering the United States without special permission of the Attorney General. The United States will not tolerate the presence of aliens who commit crimes in our communities. Those who think they can slip back in following removal will be subject to stiff punishment. During fiscal year 1995, the United States Attorneys along the Southwest border filed 1,322 cases against deported aliens who reentered, a 105 percent increase over 1994. Indeed, more criminal aliens were arrested and prosecuted between 1995 and early 1996 than during the entire previous nine-year period from 1985 through 1994.