Houston Chronicle
WASHINGTON — The United States will begin turning back would-be immigrants and will kick out foreigners already living here if they are deemed to be members or supporters of a terrorist group, Attorney General John Ashcroft announced Wednesday.
"America will not allow terrorists to use our hospitality as a weapon against us," Ashcroft said during a news briefing.
Ashcroft said a Foreign Terrorist Tracking Task Force will be responsible for rounding up and deporting immigrants bent on harming American citizens. He asked the U.S. State Department to designate 46 organizations whose members and sympathizers will be targeted.
Ashcroft said setting up the task force is the first step in implementing the recently passed anti-terrorism law, which gives the federal government unprecedented power to coordinate the efforts of different agencies, to detain foreigners longer without charges and to eavesdrop on suspected terrorists.
Before Congress passed the law, the Immigration and Naturalization Service sought to keep criminals out of the country. But lack of funding and personnel hampered those efforts, as did laws preventing immigration officials from sharing information with the FBI and other law enforcement authorities.
The new law allows agencies to share more information; it will be the task force’s job to figure out how to do that, Ashcroft said.
Ashcroft’s terrorist list is identical to the list released earlier by the U.S. Treasury Department, citing groups whose assets should be frozen. It includes groups linked to Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida network. The Afghanistan-based organization is believed responsible for the Sept. 11 hijacking attacks that killed more than 5,000 people in New York, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania.
Also listed are other organizations that have committed or planned violent terrorist acts, or served as fronts for terrorist organizations, Ashcroft said.
The tightening of immigration policies came amid growing concern that it is too easy for terrorists to enter the country.
The State Department said Wednesday that 15 of the 19 hijackers in the Sept. 11 attacks applied for visas in Saudi Arabia. Their names were checked against lists of suspected terrorists. Six of the men were interviewed, but all were granted visas, officials said.
Ashcroft said the task force will help officials at the INS, the FBI, Customs Service and other federal agencies to share information and work together to weed out any foreigners suspected of being "terrorist aliens."
He said foreigners who are "representatives, members or supporters of terrorist organizations," as well as those suspected of engaging in terrorist activity or providing "material support" to terrorist activity, will be barred from the country.
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