WASHINGTON: Shocked and dismayed at the recent wave of arrests, interrogation and fingerprinting, Muslims in the United States say if the current campaign continues, they may be forced to leave the country.
“Is this really happening? Or is it only a nightmare,” asked Mahbubul Karim Sohel in an article published in a Muslim community newspaper, Info Times.
This travesty of justice is being directly driven by the highest authorities in the Justice Department. Attorney General John Ashcroft should be personally held accountable for “ruining the lives of hundreds of innocent families,” wrote another concerned Muslim, Ali Moayedian.
And it is not just the Muslims who are complaining. In a recent statement, the American Civil Liberties Union said, “the INS is using the registration programme as a pretext for the mass detention of hundreds of Middle Eastern and Muslim men and boys.”
“Given the evidence, there is no alarmism in saying this is a round-up,” said Lucas Guttentag, Director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project.
“Attorney General Ashcroft is using the immigrant registration programme to lock up people who already have provided extensive information as part of their green card applications,” he said. “Therefore the purpose is clearly not to get information but rather to selectively arrest, detain and deport Middle Eastern and Muslim men in the United States.”
The Immigration and Naturalization Service says it has only arrested 400 Muslims. Advocacy groups say the numbers are much higher than that.
Those detained had reported to the INS under a programme which requires non-immigrant visa holding men over 16 years of age who are nationals of 18 mainly Muslim countries to be photographed, fingerprinted and interviewed.
Previously, Justice Department officials had said that the majority of those detained were held because the INS could not process unexpectedly large numbers of registrants quickly enough.
The detentions brought a wave of criticism and protest from Muslim and civil rights organizations, especially in southern California, where the majority of detentions took place. Advocates warned that the detentions might scare visitors away from registering, leaving them open to deportation.
On the first anniversary of the Sept 11, 2001, attacks, the US government launched the National Security Entry Exit Registration System, targeting all adult male visitors from Iraq, Iran, Libya, Syria and Sudan. An additional 13 countries were added to the list in October.
More than 3,000 men from the five countries needed to register by Monday, to have their identities compared with listings in a database of terrorist connections. Those who do not register can be deported.
Another group of more than 7,000 males from 13 other nations — Afghanistan, Algeria, Bahrain, Eritrea, Lebanon, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Somalia, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, Yemen and North Korea — are required to register by Jan 10.
Pakistan and Saudi Arabia were added to the list earlier this week. Citizens of both nations visiting the United States must register with the INS between Jan 13 and Feb 21.
Spokesman Jorge Martinez says the INS will continue to hold out-of-status aliens for national security checks because America cannot risk another terrorist attack.
Martinez said a large number of those who came for registration on the last day were out-of-status.
But a Muslim advocacy group — the Council on American-Islamic Relations — said it was “dismayed and shocked” at the “arrests, detentions and treatment” of Muslims in Texas and California.
Quoting immigration lawyers, the Washington-based Muslim group said throughout the country people are “being asked questions about mosque attendance, their political views and other personal information.”
“Some are being strip-searched, shackled and given inadequate clothing.”
CAIR also questioned the manner of the arrests of four well- known members of the Muslim community in Dallas, Texas, earlier this week.
As in past raids in northern Virginia, media had prior knowledge of the raids and filmed the actions, CIAR said.
“While the American Muslim community supports all actions that will safeguard our country’s security, there is now a sense among many that the Justice Department considers Muslims guilty until proven innocent,” said the advocacy group.
INS officials reject these charges and defends the campaign as necessary to protect America against future terrorist attacks. But the American Civil Liberties Union questions the effectiveness of the registration programme.
“The INS is wasting an incredible amount of government resources in rounding up these men,” said Dalia Hashad, the ACLU’s Arab, Muslim and South Asian advocate.
The ACLU and some Muslim groups also dispute the INS figures about the numbers detained.
“We received hundreds of complaints during the last three days,” says Aslam Abdullah, member of the executive board of the Muslim Public Affairs Council.
The American Civil Liberties Union says 700 were arrested in California alone, “while it remains unclear how many others have been detained across the country.”
ACLU said that “a full one-quarter of all those who complied with the programme were arrested in Los Angeles.”
Iranians appear to be the most affected, followed by Arabs and Afghans.
In Los Angeles, the arrests sparked a demonstration by hundreds of Iranians outside an immigration office on Wednesday.
The protesters carried banners saying, “What’s next? Concentration camps?” and “What happened to liberty and justice?”
Hussein Ibish, communications director for the American-Arab Anti-Defamation Committee, who has been working in Southern California with aliens attempting to register, said the situation in “California is particularly bad.”
“Los Angles and Orange County are a disaster area,” he said. “It’s a combination of long lines, and the INS zeal. It’s clear that the INS is applying the rules and laws with a strictness that is uncommon is other parts of the country.”
He said minor violations that would otherwise be excused or ignored were leading to arrests and threats of deportations.
ACLU said the INS arrested men who were “simply waiting for approval of their green card applications, or those with minor visa problems caused by incompetence in the agency itself, which has been plagued by an inept bureaucracy for years.” Officials at the US Justice Department in Washington confirmed that “otherwise legal and law abiding residents” have been detained for minor violations.
“Since the aliens in question were from countries that were considered by the United States to be state sponsors of terrorism, no chances would be taken,” he said.
“We don’t want to detain guys with minor violations for 90 days and see them deported,” he said. “But after the Sept 11 attacks — which were done by legal aliens — we cannot take a chance of anyone we had in custody being released and then committing some act. That can never happen again.”
INS spokesman Martinez confirmed that the department had received requests for extension but said: “We are giving no extensions. Individuals cases are being accommodated on medical and other grounds, but no extensions.”
