Almost 50 Illegal Workers Nabbed On Seymour-Johnson

Who's working on the sensitive bases of the US military? The Air Force pleads ignorance. The Federal Bureau of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement is, however, weeding the Air Force's garden of illegal-alien gardeners and other workers who slipped onto bases with false papers. This time, 48 illegals were taken into custody at a major Strike Eagle base, Seymour-Johnson AFB, in North Carolina.

The USAF had parceled out a number of tasks at the base, including authenticating the workers used, to top defense contractor Parsons Evergreene Corp. (PE), of Salt Lake City. PE had in turn hired a small army of illegal aliens, who then entered the base with false documentation. According to press reports, not just a few, but the majority of PE's Seymour-Johnson employees had bogus papers.

While employing illegal aliens is itself a Federal crime, carefully parsed statements from ICE and PE indicated that the company itself was not going to be called to account, nor were the managers who hired the workers. The implication is that the workers fooled the PE managers with their phony documents.

Federal, local and military law enforcement officers brought the workers together under the guise of a safety meeting -- and then arrested them. They are guaranteed a hearing before a judge, legal representation, and other due process safeguards before deportation.

Seymour-Johnson is a busy Air Combat Command base, home to the storied 4th Fighter Wing, which trains all F-15E Strike Eagle crews and deploys the nuclear-capable aircraft worldwide in support of the war and other national security missions.

Most of the workers were employed as cleaners and gardeners, and had limited access to the aircraft, and none to classified documents. None of them actually worked on the airplanes. So far, the aliens have been identified as coming from El Salvador, Mexico, Honduras, and the Ukraine, although, given their use of false papers, their true identities and even nationalities are hard to pin down.

ICE has been on a roll lately, purging military bases of unauthorized foreign workers. In May, nine illegals were discovered working on sensitive P-3 Orion patrol and reconnaissance aircraft in Winston-Salem, NC. In June, dozens more were busted in a Mississippi shipyard.

FMI: www.ice.gov