Friday night news special-Dozens of illegals found at flight training school in Mass. unknown to multi-billion tax funded TSA, DHS, ICE

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Arrests concluded "last month"....(News about government scandal isn't revealed until after election)...

• Among those arrested was the school's owner, an illegal immigrant "who continued to give flying lessons this week."
  

11/5, "TSA prompts review after flight school arrests in Stow (Mass.)," WHDH-TV

"An investigation is taking off, after

• dozens of alleged illegal immigrants were arrested in connected with a flight school in Massachusetts.

The flight school, TJ Aviation, rents space from the airfield and has a bustling Brazilian business, whether the students were illegal wasn’t the issue, but

• the hole in the government's anti-terrorism safety net is.

At Minute Man Airfield in Stow, the arrests of those

• 34 illegal immigrants learning to fly managed to slip through the cracks, which the TSA thought it had tightly sealed.

"If you can't get a driver’s license, how can you go out and get a pilot’s license? That's what these people thought they were doing," said William Joyce, who represents some of those arrested.

But after Sept. 11 the TSA put

• stiff regulations in place,
  

banning illegal immigrants from taking flying lessons. The agency issued a statement: “TSA performs a thorough background check on each applicant at the time of the application to include terrorism and other watch list matching, a criminal history check and checks for available disqualifying immigration information.”

• Yet the people who were arrested, including the owner of TJ Aviation,
  

• had all received US government clearance to train as pilots....

Immigration officials said there is and was no link to terrorism, but it still left many wondering how the TSA conducts it's business, and who may have gotten a pilot’s license before everyone else was rounded up.

The operation itself took place over the last five months. Many of those
arrested have

• been in this country for more than 15 years.

TSA said this matter has prompted a review of the process."

• ####

11/5, "Flight school arrests raise terrorism fears," Boston Globe, M. Sacchetti

"Federal officials have arrested dozens of alleged illegal immigrants connected to a flight school in Stow, including the school’s owner and students who received US government clearance to train as pilots despite strict security controls put into place after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

The arrests of 34 Brazilian nationals that began in July and concluded quietly last month raise troubling new questions about possible holes in the government’s antiterrorism security net, which bans illegal immigrants from taking flight lessons and requires background checks on any foreigner training to fly in the United States.

• No link to terrorism has been found in connection with the Stow flight school, TJ Aviation Flight Academy at Minute Man Air Field, 30 miles northwest of Boston, US immigration officials said.

All the arrested immigrants, who were learning to fly small single-engine planes, are free pending deportation hearings in federal immigration court, immigration officials said.

But the episode may have exposed problems in the Transportation Security Administration’s ability to make sure the only foreign students allowed to attend flight school are, as its website states, “properly checked, legal aliens.’’

That mandate stems from a 2004 order that TSA check all foreign flight students against terrorism, criminal and immigration databases after authorities discovered that several of the men who hijacked the airplanes used in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks had received flight training in the United States.

• TSA has faced questions before about its effectiveness in carrying out the order.
  

In 2008 ABC News reported that

• thousands of foreign nationals were obtaining pilot’s licenses without the proper paperwork.

Officials at TSA and the Federal Aviation Administration, which issues pilot’s licenses,

• could not explain this week why alleged illegal immigrants
• were allowed to take classes and obtain pilot’s licenses in Stow.

TSA officials said they are conducting a review of the circumstances by which the immigrants obtained pilot’s licenses.

Officials would not say how many students received clearance to fly and how many ultimately obtained pilot’s licenses.

• However, TSA officials said they check the backgrounds of all foreign flight students and routinely check pilot’s licenses against terrorism watch lists.

“TSA performs a thorough background check on each applicant at the time of application to include terrorism and other watch list matching, criminal history, and checking for available disqualifying immigration information,’’ spokeswoman Ann Davis said in a statement. “There is currently a review ongoing into the circumstances by which these individuals were issued pilots’ licenses.’’

Among those arrested by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents are the school’s owner, Thiago DeJesus, a 26-year-old Brazilian immigrant who holds a license to fly single-engine airplanes and who was charged in July with being in the United States illegally, federal officials said.

• DeJesus continued to give flying lessons this week.

FAA spokeswoman Laura J. Brown confirmed that DeJesus is a licensed pilot and flight instructor but would not comment on the fact that his school is still open because the agency is investigating what she called safety issues in connection with the school. She declined to elaborate....

...Federal officials have allowed his flight school to remain open."...

via MichaelSavage.com

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