HOUSTON, Texas — More than 6,000 immigrants, who came to the U.S. using student visas, are nowhere to be found on their school campuses. They have vanished.
According to ABC News, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said that the missing 6,000 students are of “heightened concern.” Officials have not been able to successfully track down these individuals. Peter Edge of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement told ABC that some of the foreigners “could be here to do us harm. … My greatest concern is that they could be doing anything.”
Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn added, “They just disappear. They get the visas and they disappear.”
Students obtaining and then overstaying Visas has been of concern to officials for years.
Hani Hanjour, the hijacker of Flight 77 on 9/11 who flew a plane into the Pentagon, had entered the U.S. using a student Visa–he never showed up at school.
Amid this issue, the U.S. has recently increased the number of foreigners allowed in the country on student Visas; the figure is now well above 1 million, according to ABC.
Breitbart Texas Contributing Editor and border security expert Sylvia Longmire said, “This is a problem that has been going on for decades, and not just with student visas or post-9/11. The DHS also has no concrete idea of exactly how many immigrants and visitors have overstayed their work or travel visas, or where they can be found.”
“The fact that they can’t locate these 6,000+ students is disturbing enough, before you tack on all the other overstays,” Longmire continued. “Based on current immigration policies, unless these students have some sort of criminal history, they will likely not become a priority for ICE to find out where they are and place them into removal proceedings.”
Follow Kristin Tate @KristinBTate.
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