The TSA, which has 55,000 employees, has compromised the nation’s security on many occasions and its lapses have been well documented over the years.
Nearly a decade after terrorists crashed planes into the World Trade Center and Pentagon how could the U.S. government permit an illegal immigrant to obtain a pilot’s license and run a school that trains dozens of foreigners to fly small aircraft?
The question is directed at the Homeland Security agency responsible for scrutinizing all foreign flight students before they can take lessons or get a pilot’s license in the U.S. Here’s a hint; the agency was created after 9/11 specifically to prevent another terrorist attack by protecting the nation’s transportation system, especially aviation. It’s the Transportation Security Administration (TSA).
A few months ago a news report alerted TSA officials that a flight school in Stow Massachusetts, a rural community about 25 miles west of Boston, was operated by an illegal immigrant who somehow got a U.S. pilot’s license. Enrolled in the school (TJ Aviation Flight Academy) were more than 30 illegal aliens who were actually cleared by the TSA to train as pilots. Several of them had entered the U.S. legally but their visas expired, just like several of the 9/11 hijackers.
Many have been deported but the TSA has failed to implement any security controls to prevent a similar atrocity, though the agency is working “to refine the process for checking the immigration status of alien flight school students,†according to a spokesman quoted in a Boston newspaper this week. The story reveals that Homeland Security officials have not instituted new safeguards to stop other flight schools from enrolling illegal immigrants who could present national security threats.
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