U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has lost track of 111,000 files in 14 of the agency's busiest district offices and processed as many as 30,000 citizenship applications last year without the necessary files, congressional investigators reported yesterday.
The Government Accountability Office, Congress's audit arm, conducted the review at the request of Sens. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) after U.S. authorities granted citizenship in 2002 to a man without checking his primary file. The file, which was lost, indicated ties to the militant Islamic group Hezbollah.
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Collins, head of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, noted that some of the Sept. 11 hijackers entered the U.S. legally, disappearing until the terrorist attacks. She called it "unthinkable" that the U.S. immigration system could still grant citizenship to a potential terrorist "simply because they can't find the person's file."
