The Post today explores how immigration violations are being used as an anti-terrorism tool. Obviously, the usual suspects hate the idea, but for investigators it’s a no-brainer — proving that you moved money for Osama can be hard, but proving that you held a job in violation of your student visa, or that you lied about being a U.S. citizen, or some other immigration-related infraction, is a lot easier.

The big difference between this immigration tactic and its precursor of going after Al Capone for not paying his taxes is that, parallel to the investigators going after gangsters, there was always an agency whose main goal was tax enforcement — whereas there is no longer an agency whose raison d’etre is immigration enforcement. The old INS was broken up and combined with the Customs Service to make up two bureaus in the new Department of Homeland Security, one for border matters and one for interior enforcement. The result has been that the corporate culture of Customs has come to dominate both bureaus, with immigration law virtually ignored except when it can be an anti-terrorism tool.