Airport passenger inspection areas anything but secure, report finds

Associated Press

WASHINGTON — Passenger inspection areas at major U.S. airports are so poorly designed that passengers could easily sneak through or hide contraband, a Justice Department report says.

The department’s inspector general blamed inadequate oversight by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, which is supposed to make sure airports that receive international passengers have secure inspection areas.

The INS agreed to draft new security requirements for airports to improve inspection facilities.

Such areas at 42 international airports across the country were poorly designed and had numerous monitoring problems, the report said. Gates could be circumvented, emergency exits had no alarms and inspection areas had no emergency call buttons for alerting airport security, according to surveys and on-site reviews conducted in 1999.

It also said that holding rooms where potentially inadmissible foreigners were detained were too small and did not permit separate confinement of male, female and juvenile detainees; 13 airports had no holding rooms at all.

"The potential for escape is greater, as is the risk of smuggled explosives, weapons, drugs and other contraband," said the report by Inspector General Glenn Fine.

The report cited an instance at Los Angeles International Airport in which a woman jumped from a window in the holding room. In another case, a detainee at the Anchorage International Airport escaped through a corridor and jumped from a third-floor balcony. The airport had no holding room.

The findings were made public this week amid heightened concerns about airport safety following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Three of the nation’s busiest international airports — in New York, Los Angeles and Miami — need the most extensive work to improve monitoring of passenger inspection areas, the report said.

The INS approves the design of passenger inspection areas, and the agency had asked the inspector general to review such facilities at international airports because immigration officials were concerned about the adequacy of holding rooms.