Wow. I’m still speechless and left trying to even fathom this one.
Ten years from now this may be regarded as an urban legend, but…
The official story is that a couple INS managers lost it one day and started having incoming INS mail professionally shredded because there was just too much of it. (A new variation on going postal!)

I.N.S. Shredder Ended WorkBacklog, U.S. Says
By John M. Broder for the NY Times.

Tens of thousands of pieces of mail come into the huge Immigration and Naturalization Service data processing center in Laguna Niguel, Calif., every day, and as at so many government agencies, it tends to pile up. One manager there had a system to get rid of the vexing backlog, federal officials say. This week the manager was charged with illegally shredding as many as 90,000 documents.
Among the destroyed papers, federal officials charged, were American and foreign passports, applications for asylum, birth certificates and other documents supporting applications for citizenship, visas and work permits.
The manager, Dawn Randall, 24, was indicted late Wednesday by a federal grand jury, along with a supervisor working under her, Leonel Salazar, 34. They are accused of ordering low-level workers to destroy thousands of documents from last February to April to reduce a growing backlog of unprocessed paperwork…
By the end of March, the backlog had been cut to zero, and Ms. Randall ordered her subordinates to continue destroying incoming paper to keep current, the government says.
“There was no I.N.S. policy that required this, nor was she ordered to do it by any superior, as far as we know,” said Greg Staples, the assistant United States attorney handling the case. “The only motive we can think of is just the obvious one of a manager trying to get rid of a nettlesome problem.”
Ms. Randall and Mr. Salazar were each charged with conspiracy and five counts of willfully destroying documents filed with the I.N.S. The conspiracy charge carries a maximum penalty of five years in federal prison. Each of the other counts can bring three years in prison.
Their subordinates were not charged because they were low-level workers acting on instructions, the government said.
After the shredding was discovered, the immigration service opened a hotline for people who suspected their paperwork had been destroyed. Agency officials helped petitioners reconstruct their files and gave applicants the benefit of the doubt if they could not replace the documents they had submitted, said Lori Haley, a spokeswoman for the I.N.S.’s western regional office.
She said the agency made an effort last year to publicize the problem and was confident that it had rebuilt most of the lost files. She also said that additional staff members had been hired at the center and that oversight had been tightened…
The four document processing centers are operated under a $325 million contract with JHM Research and Development of Maryland, which in turn subcontracts the operations to two other companies. John Macklin, president of JHM, was unavailable for comment.
Mr. Staples, the federal prosecutor, said the contractors were cooperating with the investigation and would not be charged unless more evidence against them was developed.
“If we had found criminal liability, we would have indicted the companies,” he said.

Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/31/national/31FILE.html
I.N.S. Shredder Ended WorkBacklog, U.S. Says
By JOHN M. BRODER
OS ANGELES, Jan. 30