Airport Screening Nets Illegal Immigrant in Minneapolis

Airport security officials touted a relatively new anti-terrorism program Monday that resulted in the detection of an illegal immigrant, once charged in a Minneapolis murder case, who was planning to fly out of the Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport on Friday.

The man, Luis B. Acevedo, 28, had been charged in 1999 in the murder of a 12-year-old boy and an 18-year-old man, but the charges were later dropped, said Tim Counts, spokesman for the area U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office. Acevedo's worried disposition was noticed by Jim Gallagher, a federal officer trained in the year-old program to pick out airline passengers showing signs of high levels of anxiety, fear or deceptiveness that could characterize terrorists.

Gallagher was commended by Kenneth Kasprisin, security director at the airport for the U.S. Transportation Security Administration. He said the detection program, called Screening Passengers by Observation Techniques, has been used at the airport for about 15 months and has identified about 100 potentially high-risk people who were referred to airport or local police. He didn't know what police did with the referrals.

Counts said Acevedo, who had a ticket for Mexico City, is in ICE custody and will be deported again, officials said. Counts said ICE deported him in March 2000 after charges were dropped linking him to the gang-related double homicide. Another man was convicted in May 2000.

Since then, Acevedo illegally reentered the U.S., Counts said, noting that ICE has found no outstanding arrest warrants for him.

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