Reports last week said that Tahaya Buchanan had simply walked into the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services office in Atlanta, despite the existence of a nationwide alert seeking her arrest. In fact, she apparently did this repeatedly for quite some time, because, you see, she worked there.
Buchanan had been indicted in New Jersey for insurance fraud in 2007, and a warrant for her arrest was issued that December and was posted to the National Crime Information Center in January 2008. New Jersey prosecutor Michael Morris said they believed Buchanan had been working for Homeland Security in New Jersey in 2007, and might have been transferred to the department's immigration office in Georgia at some point during the investigation.
That's where authorities lost track of her.
"We found it surprising [and] alarming," Morris said, "that an employee of the Department of Homeland Security is a fraudster, and we do not understand how she could have remained employed there with an open criminal warrant for her arrest remaining on the interstate system without being discovered."
You don't? I do.
According to the Newark Star-Ledger, a USCIS spokesperson said on Wednesday that the bureau was still investigating the matter and that she "did not have information available as to whether the office regularly checks its employee list against national criminal warrants." Because why would it do something like that?
Link: MSNBCLink: Newark Star-Ledger
