From the NY Times:
Tens of thousands of pieces of mail come into the huge Immigration and Naturalization Service data processing center in Laguna Niguel, Calif., every day, and as at so many government agencies, it tends to pile up. One manager there had a system to get rid of the vexing backlog, federal officials say. This week the manager was charged with illegally shredding as many as 90,000 documents.
Among the destroyed papers, federal officials charged, were American and foreign passports, applications for asylum, birth certificates and other documents supporting applications for citizenship, visas and work permits.
The manager, Dawn Randall, 24, was indicted late Wednesday by a federal grand jury, along with a supervisor working under her, Leonel Salazar, 34. They are accused of ordering low-level workers to destroy thousands of documents from last February to April to reduce a growing backlog of unprocessed paperwork.
Ain’t that grand!
UPDATE: Here.
I wonder how many of the people whose documents were shredded will now be arrested for “visa violations.”
Possibly quite a few. I have experienced and heard quite a few horror stories regarding INS and the immigration officials at the airport. They would probably be a waste of bandwidth here.
I have also posted the INS side of this story here.