Washington, D.C. (March 2, 2023) – The Center for Immigration Studies will unveil a new database of national security vetting failures at a panel discussion at 9:00 am ET on Wednesday, March 8. This database is the first known collection of preventable federal government vetting failures that enabled the entry of foreign nationals who threatened and harmed American national interests and public safety. The information collected in the database offers an opportunity to study and understand the failures, with an eye toward preventing such failures in the future.
The number of visa security failures already in the database illustrates the link between national security and immigration policy. To discuss this, the March 8 panel will be comprised of individuals with experience in three institutions involved in vetting those coming to this country: intelligence, DHS, and the State Department.

• Todd Bensman, Senior National Security Fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies and a former counterterrorism intelligence practitioner at the Texas Department of Public Safety's Intelligence and Counterterrorism Division
• Phillip Linderman, retired State Department senior Foreign Service officer with experience in working with foreign governments, as well as U.S. law enforcement and intelligence partners, on matters such as visa and passport fraud, human trafficking, terrorist travel, watchlisting, and identity information collection and use
• Robert Law, Director of the Center for Homeland Security and Immigration at the America First Policy Institute and a former senior official at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS)

 
Bensman said, “Terrorists, spies, war criminals, and other threats to national security have regularly defeated federal screening systems, allowing them to enter and often become embedded in this country. Rather than letting the points of failure in our vetting system remain publicly unknown and largely forgotten, the CIS database is offered to draw public attention to the weak links, so as to prompt repairs and sustain vigilance against repetition.”