CHICAGO (AFP) — More than a hundred people with fake identification were given employee security passes to Chicago's O'Hare airport, officials said Wednesday.
The airport raid, which netted 23 undocumented workers from Mexico, showed that rigid new security protocols implemented in the six years since the terrorist attacks of September 11 are still not working.
The city's department of aviation is supposed to rigorously screen all employees granted access to secure areas like the tarmac and cargo areas.
That process is supposed to include fingerprinting, an FBI criminal check, and a security threat assessment.
But 110 employees of one contractor on site used social security numbers which either did not exist or belonged to other people, some of whom were dead, according to a criminal complaint.
One undocumented worker looking for work at the airport, who was actually a government informer, was told to look through a box with about 20 airport security badges and "pick one with a picture that most closely resembled his own likeness" the complaint said.
"If we are to ensure public safety, we must know who has access to the secure areas of airports," said Patrick Fitzgerald, US attorney for the northern district of Illinois.
"A fundamental component of airport safety is preventing the use of false identification badges and punishing those who commit or enable such violations."
The Department of Homeland Security said it was concentrating its immigration enforcement actions on worksites "related to critical infrastructure and national security."
"Unauthorized workers employed at sensitive facilities such as airports, nuclear power plants, chemical plants, military bases, defense facilities and seaports pose a vulnerability which compromises the integrity of those key assets," US Immigration and Customs Enforcement said in a statement.
The 23 undocumented workers who were arrested in Wednesday's raid face up to three years in jail and deportation.
The two Ideal Staffing employees who falsified the documents face up to 10 years in jail for harboring illegal aliens and five years in jail for misuse of a social security number.
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