World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef and co-conspirator Ahmad Mohammed Ajaj were stopped by customs at JFK airport in New York after flying in from Pakistan on September 1, 1992. Ajaj “was charged with passport fraud and soon sentenced to six months in prison. …Yousef told the immigration inspector that he was fleeing from the oppressive regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq and needed asylum in the U.S. …an INS [Immigration and Naturalization Service] inspector recommended that he be detained. But there was not enough room in the INS lockup, so he was released with the promise that he would turn up at a hearing later.”
– John Miller, Michael Stone, and Chris Mitchell, The Cell, Page 77