Agents detain 2 men from train in Fort Worth

By DAN MALONEand MICHELLE MITTELSTADT

Staff Writers / The Dallas Morning News

FORT WORTH – Federal authorities were holding two men Thursday who were removed from an Amtrak train here Wednesday night with box cutters in their possession, officials said.

The men also had about $5,000 in cash and black hair dye, according to a federal government official speaking on condition of anonymity.

They were detained on suspicion of carrying fraudulent immigration documents and later found to have expired visas.

Luggage seized by federal agents had baggage claim tickets from a TWA flight that operated Tuesday, when hijackers wielding box cutters crashed commercial jets into New York's World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

The two men had traveled Tuesday on a flight from Newark, N.J., that was scheduled to make a brief stop in St. Louis en route to San Antonio, the federal source said.

The plane apparently went no further than St. Louis after the Federal Aviation Administration, responding to the terrorist attacks, grounded all flights.

One of the hijacked planes had originated in Newark, though it was scheduled to fly to San Francisco.

The men were removed from the train in Fort Worth after becoming involved in what the federal source described only as an altercation. That matter came to the attention of local police, who detained the men after finding them acting suspiciously, the source said.

Upon checking the men's belongings and finding the cash, box cutters, dye and other unspecified objects, police contacted the FBI.

The source said the FBI had not been aware the men were aboard the train and was not looking for them in connection with the hijackings at the time.

Seized luggage also had claim tickets for the train, which originated in Chicago and was bound for San Antonio. It had stopped in St. Louis and Little Rock before making its scheduled stop in Fort Worth. Employees at the station here said passengers were removed from the train while federal agents took the two men away.

 Immigration agents questioned the pair for about five hours before they were taken to the Tarrant County Jail. They were held in isolation overnight and turned over to U.S. marshals Thursday.

Neither man had addresses or relatives listed on their jail records, but both told officials they were born in India. Their ages were listed as 47 and 51.

According to Tarrant County Sheriff's Lt. Mac West, the men had little on their person by the time they reached the jail. One carried an address book, an employment identification card and less than $2 in change. The other had an "NYC'' identification card and about $24, he said.

By Thursday afternoon, no one had been arrested anywhere on charges related to Tuesday's massive terrorist strikes, federal officials said.

Several people have been detained on immigration matters."There's a large difference between arresting someone for a crime related to the overall crime and arresting somebody for having false identification or whatever," Justice Department spokeswoman Mindy Tucker said.

Staff writers Nancy Calaway and Debra Dennis in Fort Worth contributed to this report.