Conspiracy at the Immigration Dept.?

I.N.S. Shredder Ended Work Backlog, U.S. Says
By JOHN M. BRODER


LOS ANGELES, Jan. 30 � Tens of thousands of pieces of mail come into the huge Immigration and Naturalization Service data processing center in Laguna Niguel, Calif., every day, and as at so many government agencies, it tends to pile up. One manager there had a system to get rid of the vexing backlog, federal officials say. This week the manager was charged with illegally shredding as many as 90,000 documents.

Among the destroyed papers, federal officials charged, were American and foreign passports, applications for asylum, birth certificates and other documents supporting applications for citizenship, visas and work permits.

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........"is one of four immigration service centers around the country operated by private contractors ".....

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After the shredding was discovered, the immigration service opened a hotline for people who suspected their paperwork had been destroyed. Agency officials helped petitioners reconstruct their files and gave applicants the benefit of the doubt if they could not replace the documents they had submitted, said Lori Haley, a spokeswoman for the I.N.S.'s western regional office.

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Mr. Staples said one frustrating thing about the case was that most of the evidence had been carted out with the trash and that it was impossible to identify all of the victims.
"It's like a murder case without a body," he said. "We will never really know what was destroyed."

www.nytimes.com...

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Let's see:
a) Private Contractor running Immigration and Naturalization Services office

b) 90,000 folks lost to the system, real paper work unrecoverable

c) 'Applicant' given the "benefit of doubt" in reconstructing their paperwork

Hmmmmmmmmm?
Now when, or I should say if, they trace the terrorists who blow up....the Golden Gate Bridge maybe, back to that little old INS paper shred illegal entry cover up.........
whose finger prints do you think will be on it?