LOS ANGELES: Cabbie-passenger relations in New York have never been perfect, what with midtown traffic and differences over routes and tips.

Since Sept 11, though, a more disturbing stress has emerged for the 90 per cent immigrant population of 45,000 yellow-cab drivers in USA.

Given the widespread anxiety over beards, head coverings, and certain shades of skin, daily frictions have risen.

The fear might seem silly if it had not already come true. Sometime after Sept 11, a Bangladeshi Muslim driver was arrested after arguing with a passenger who quizzed him on his political views.

The passenger called authorities, who reportedly found irregularities on some of the driver’s identification documents. Friends have not heard from him since and assume the immigrant is in an INS prison, says Haq.

It is the worst case so far, but numerous tales of passenger harassment and slurs — “Osama” is a popular — one have the drivers on edge.

Indeed, it is an irony of the post-Sept 11 times that suspicion in the name of safety has brought only harm to some.

Federal authorities have jailed over 1,000 immigration violators, and tagged for questioning some 5,000 visitors and students, from the Middle East without charging any with terrorist activity.

When the US administration two weeks ago announced a campaign to rout 6,000 Middle Eastern deportation dodgers from the country overlooking for now the 308,000 from other regions, they effectively declared open season on illegal residents.

In the mounting manhunt, the fate of a few has come to lie in the hands of a wary and not always well-intentioned many.

Last week, Attorney General John Ashcroft renewed the administration’s mantra asking “citizens to be vigilant, to be alert to any possible threat.” And citizens have been dutiful. In the two months after Sept 11 alone, the FBI received almost 435,000 terrorism- related tips.

Part of the State Department programme since 1984, “Rewards for Justice” loosed a publicity blitz in the news media after Sept 11 to promote a $25 million reward. “Prevent Terrorism” and “Do You Know a Terrorist?”

Yet while no terrorists have been found, the manhunt has put over 1,000 Arabs and South Asians in jail. Attorneys and families have had trouble just finding them, since the Justice Department has refused to reveal the identities and whereabouts of most.

But several lawyers and advocates for detainees say they are fairly certain of one thing, that authorities did not find them all on their own.

Given the daunting possibilities, immigrants from suspect nations feel fenced in by fear, say community advocates, assuming the slightest transgression or misunderstanding could plunge them into a real-life nightmare.