Traveler with TB did not use alias

Key senators said a Mexican national infected with a highly contagious form of tuberculosis did not use a fake name to enter the country 76 times and take numerous flights, as Homeland Security spokesmen had previously stated.

Sen. Joe Lieberman, Connecticut independent and chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, and Sen. Susan Collins, Maine Republican and the panel’s ranking member, said that Customs and Border Protection officials had the name and a corrected date of birth by mid-April but that the man continued to cross the border unfettered 21 more times.

“He wasn’t using an alias,” Miss Collins said.

“The first report that we got from the [Homeland Security] department was that that was the reason. That turned out not to be the case,” Miss Collins said.

Mr. Lieberman and Miss Collins questioned Paul Rosenzweig, Homeland Security deputy assistant secretary for policy, about the conflicting excuses and the potential health threat caused by the lapse during a hearing this week.

“We are not satisfied, and we don’t want this to happen again,” said Mr. Lieberman, who along with Miss Collins is drafting a follow-up letter to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and Health and Human Services Secretary Michael O. Leavitt demanding more answers on how the health-security lapse occurred.

The Washington Times last week reported that Amado Isidro Armendariz Amaya made the border crossings from August 2006 to June 2007. Homeland Security (DHS) officials had said the Mexican businessman was traveling under an alias.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) was warned by Mexican health officials and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on April 16 that the frequent traveler was infected with multi-drug resistant (MDR) tuberculosis.

But according to internal DHS e-mails obtained by The Times, Mr. Armendariz did not use a fake name but rather used variations of his own name. For example, he customarily went by his middle name “Isidro,” rather than his formal birth name, “Amado.”

The e-mails show nine variations of his name in a system that is capable of searching two dozen law-enforcement databases.

In this week’s hearing, the Senate committee learned that Customs and Border Protection officials had the name of “Isidro Armendariz Amaya” and the correct birth date in April.

Homeland Security officials, however, took more than six weeks to issue a May 31 alert to warn its own border inspectors, according to Homeland Security sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.

MDR tuberculosis is a highly contagious and dangerous illness — the same strain that concerned health officials when Andrew Speaker, a 31-year-old Atlanta lawyer, slipped into the U.S. from Europe via a flight to Canada. The story set off alarms that the system had failed to identify the contagious passenger, which led to congressional hearings in June.

The Mexican national’s border crossing card was canceled on June 1. However, Border Patrol officials declined to report the health security breach when it briefed the Senate committee on Mr. Speaker’s case on June 4. The CDC also failed to report the Mexico breach when it briefed the committee on June 6.

The Mexican national was not placed on the no-fly list until the Transportation Security Agency was warned on June 7.

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