An Alien Dragnet

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It seemed at first like a cumbersome bit of old-fashioned gumshoe work. Soon after the U.S. military went into Afghanistan, the FBI, the CIA and military intelligence began collecting fingerprints of al-Qaeda operatives and members of other international terrorist groups. They scoured caves and safe houses in Afghanistan and Pakistan and sought records from police and security services worldwide. Thousands of prints were digitized and entered into a classified database, along with names, aliases, mug shots, addresses, associates, descriptions of scars and, occasionally, DNA data.

Now, U.S. authorities say, this ambitious project is paying off. In the past three months, federal law-enforcement officials tell TIME, two men attempting to enter the U.S. were red-flagged when matches of their fingerprints and other information were found in the terrorist database. U.S. officials won't divulge more details, but they say the fingerprinting matches validate the Justice Department's beefed-up program to screen foreigners, the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System. Those efforts include not only more scrutiny at the border but also the internal "call-ins" of men from predominantly Arab and Muslim countries, which have drawn protests from civil-rights groups. Last week marked the second of three deadlines for men from 20 countries to report to INS offices, where they are questioned, photographed and fingerprinted.

Sources tell TIME of one intriguing arrest that resulted from these call-ins: a Saudi student at a Florida aviation school was detained after he ignored a legal requirement to check in with the INS within 30 days of entering the U.S. Officials say he is being held in jail and investigated. So far, there's no evidence of terrorist links, but the case is being taken seriously because seven of the Sept. 11 hijackers—including four Saudis—studied in U.S. flight schools. A lawyer engaged by the Saudi embassy says she knows of no one who is being held as a possible national-security threat as a result of the immigration crackdown.