No Apparent Terrorism Link

Immigration authorities are investigating a flight school near San Diego, CA on suspicion of sponsoring student visas while lacking Federal Aviation Administration certification.

Anglo-American Aviation, located on Gillespie Field in suburban El Cajon, voluntarily shut down last week when immigration agents executed search warrants and seized records, reports the San Jose Mercury News. The school resumed flying on Friday, after immigrations agents returned the school's logbooks.

No arrests have been made.

Flight schools are required to have FAA certification to sponsor foreign students for flight training in the US. Anglo-American allowed its FAA certification to lapse last year, said agency spokesman Ian Gregor.

Visa applications for foreign flight training students are subject to background checks by the US State Department.

"Any time this kind of violation occurs, we’re going to make sure we do a very thorough investigation including any possible security breaches,” said ICE spokeswoman Lauren Mack. "But the investigation is ongoing and it would be premature to make any terrorism link.”

The school has no links to flight training facilities used by the 9/11 hijackers, the paper stated.

A lawyer for Anglo-American characterizes any violations as technicalities. "The gist of the investigation is that these guys have authority through the FAA to issue these forms that allow foreigners to apply for visas to come here, and the question is whether they kept doing that after they lost their certification,” said Jeremy Warren.

Anglo-American has been incorporated since 1994, and offers programs specifically tailored toward students from Europe and India, offering both FAA and JAA licenses and ratings in a condensed time frame.

FMI: www.flyaaa.com, www.ice.gov/