Fugitive Found Working for Homeland Security: 'It’s Amazing They Couldn’t Find Her. Good Lord'

Well, they were probably just making sure they met quotas and were in fear of being called racist if they did't give her a job. Nice to see the federal government doing the appropriate background checks.

A New Jersey fugitive wanted on insurance fraud charges since 2007 was working for the immigration division of the Department of Homeland Security in Georgia, despite a nation-wide alert for her arrest, Essex County prosecutors said today.

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services office in Atlanta was unaware that Tahaya Buchanan, 39, formerly of Newark, was being sought on a 2007 indictment on charges she staged the theft of her Range Rover in Newark for an insurance pay-out, said Paul Loriquet of the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office.

He said the USCIS continued to remain unaware of the criminal case after Buchanan was arrested on July 9 in DeKalb County, Georgia, by a traffic cop who noticed a warrant for her arrest was issued in December 2007 by a New Jersey judge and posted a month later on the National Crime Information Center.

Today, Buchanan’s supervisors at the CIS office in Atlanta said they did not know about the criminal charges, despite the fact Buchanan remained in a Georgia jail for a week after her arrest. On Monday, she pleaded guilty to a one charge of insurance fraud for which she faces three months of probation.

"It’s amazing they couldn’t find her. Good Lord," said Kevin Kerns, the office chief of staff at USCIS where Buchanan still works as an analyst.

Ana Santiago, a spokeswoman for the USCIS, said they are still checking into the case and did not have information available as to whether the office regularly checks its employee list against national criminal warrants.

"The USCIS is looking into this matter. USCIS has zero tolerance for any type of employee misconduct or criminal activity," she added.