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Report: DHS gave Somalis sensitive info on airport 'engagement' tours
NEW YORK - JANUARY 5: A U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent stands watch as a crowd of overseas visitors to the U.S. wait in line to pass through Customs January 5, 2004 at JFK airport in New York City. Today, JFK began taking finger scans and photographs of people entering the U.S. for the purpose of checking against terrorist watch lists. U.S. citizens and holders of green cards, as well as individuals from 27 countries whose citizens are not required to obtain visas to travel to U.S. are exempt from the requirement. The system, called US-VISIT, for United States Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology, will be implemented at 115 American airports and 14 seaports. (Photo by Stephen Chernin/Getty Images)

Report: DHS gave Somalis sensitive info on airport 'engagement' tours

Nonprofit watchdog organization Judicial Watch says they have documents that prove the Department of Homeland Security gave Somali groups "security briefings and access to secured areas in 'community engagement tours' at major U.S. airports," according to a report from The Daily Caller.

The tours, three at major airports in the last year, were so sensitive that U.S. Customs and Border Patrol asked that portions of the documents be redacted before Judicial Watch received them through a Freedom on Information Act request. Border Patrol redacted the 31-page document "on the basis that releasing the information could risk law enforcement operations."

More from The Daily Caller:

“Logically, information that is too sensitive to provide to Judicial Watch and the public should not have been given to a ‘community engagement tour,'” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in a news release. “The U.S. government has been aware for years that Minnesota is a hotbed of Somali terrorist-cell activity. The behind-the-scenes tours and security briefings of the Minneapolis airport very well could have created a threat to public safety.”

The tours took place at airports in Los Angeles, Minneapolis, and Columbus, Ohio. The Somali groups reportedly heard information regarding the airport’s global entry system, automated passport control system, secondary screening procedures and baggage-screening procedures.

The redacted portions were related to the type of Transportation Security Administration processing procedures they were shown.

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Sarah Lee

Sarah Lee

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