Tahaya Buchanan, 39, Wanted NJ Fugitive, Found Working at Homeland Security Department's Citizenship & Immigration Office in Georgia

New Jersey Fugitive, Tahaya Buchanan is discovered working at Homeland Security Department's Citizenship & Immigration Office in Atlanta, Georgia.

If this isn't further proof that the Department of Homeland Security is a mess, then I don't know what else is. Tahaya Buchanan, 39, is a New Jersey fugitive, who was wanted on insurance fraud charges since 2007. She was found working for the immigration division of the Department of Homeland Security in Georgia, despite a nationwide alert for her arrest. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services office in Atlanta was unaware that she was being sough on charges that she staged the theft of her Ranger Rover in Newark for an insurance payout. What's even worst is the fact that she was even arrested on July 9 in Dekalb County, Ga., by a traffic officer who noticed a warrant for her arrest was issued in December, 2007, by a New Jersey judge and was posted a month later on the National Crime Information Center, and the USCIS was still unaware of the criminal case. She remained in a Georgia jail for a week after her arrest and her supervisors still had no clue what was going on.

Buchanan pleaded guilty to one charge on insurance fraud on Monday. She faces three months of probation. Here's the question I have for the USCIS, don't you regularly check your employees against national criminal warrants? According to the Star-Ledger, Essex County Assistant Prosecutor Michael Morris said his detectives believe Buchanan was working for Homeland Security while still living in New Jersey in 2007, and that she may have transferred to the Georgia office while under investigation. But Morris said his office is baffled as to why the warrant for her arrest, placed on a national alert system, did not prompt Homeland Security to notice that one of its employees was wanted on a criminal warrant.

Buchanan was indicted in November 2007 on a charge of second-degree insurance fraud. A warrant was issued for her arrest a month later by a Superior Court judge in Newark after she failed to appear for a court hearing. The warrant was entered on the National Crime Information Center system on Jan. 8, 2008, essentially notifying law enforcement agencies nationwide that she was a fugitive. She admitted on Monday that she falsely reported her car stolen in March 2005 and filed an insurance claim. The Range Rover was found by police a month after the report was filed. It was found in an Irvington garage owned by her aunt after the garage caught fire, the assistant prosecutor said. Buchanan's insurance company launched a probe and eventually denied her insurance claim. A criminal probe was later opened.

Again, how could the Department of Homeland Security not realize that a wanted fugitive was working in one of their agencies?

Photo credit:  Tahaya Buchanan, Essex Prosecutor's office