Succesful 'Special Registration'

[Ivo Skoric]

'Special Registration' of Men from Muslim nations was so succesful 
at the L.A. INS office, that they run out of handcuffs.
ivo

------- Forwarded Message Follows -------
NYTimes.com
Men From Muslim Nations Swamp Immigration Office

December 17, 2002
By JOHN M. BRODER with SUSAN SACHS 


LOS ANGELES, Dec. 16 - Lines began forming before dawn
today outside the downtown federal building here as
hundreds of men from five Muslim countries showed up to
register with immigration authorities under a sweeping
national dragnet designed to identify potential terrorists.


Attorney General John Ashcroft issued an order last month
requiring virtually all male noncitizens over the age of 16
who come from 18 countries, mostly Arab and Muslim, to be
interviewed, photographed and fingerprinted by federal
authorities. The program affects tens of thousands of
immigrants from those countries, most of whom hold valid
work and study visas. 

Those who fail to comply face criminal charges and
immediate expulsion from the country. 

The deadline for men from Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya and
Sudan was today. Early this morning, the Los Angeles
headquarters of the I.N.S. was ringed with hundreds of
immigrants from those countries accompanied by anxious
relatives and immigration lawyers. The hallway outside the
interview room was jammed with scores of men from the five
countries awaiting investigation. Similar scenes played out
at immigration offices around the country. 

Over the past week, agency officials enforcing the program
have handcuffed and detained hundreds of men who showed up
to be fingerprinted. In some cases the men had expired
student or work visas; in other cases the men could not
provide adequate documentation of their immigration status.
At one point on Friday, officials in the Los Angeles office
ran out of plastic handcuffs as they herded men into the
basement lockup of the federal building, said Ali Bolour,
an immigration lawyer who shepherded several clients
through the process. 

Advocates for immigrant rights said that the program had
sent waves of fear through immigrant communities and that
it was unlikely to make the country safer. 

"This is part of a steady drumbeat of Department of Justice
actions that have really put immigrants in the cross
hairs," said Angela Kelley, deputy director of the National
Immigration Forum, a pro-immigration group in Washington. "


All this is doing is making a bigger haystack, not finding
more needles," Ms. Kelley said. 

Immigration officials in Los Angeles declined to discuss
the program, referring all calls to Washington. The
Department of Justice official authorized to speak about it
did not respond to repeated phone calls. 

Jason Erb, government affairs director for the Council on
American-Islamic Relations, said the program had been
poorly publicized and asked for an extension so people who
were unaware of the requirement could voluntarily appear. 

"The government has done little to spread the word in the
Muslim and Arab-American communities about the requirement
to register," Mr. Erb said. "This seems to be another in a
series of dragnet policies that target law-abiding
visitors. These policies are an ineffective and inefficient
use of law enforcement." 

The so-called special registration program is an expansion
of an anti-terrorism directive issued this summer that
subjects citizens of countries considered a high risk for
terrorist activity to fingerprinting and additional
scrutiny when they enter and leave the United States. The
program requires those already in the United States to
appear before immigration officers to provide detailed
information about their locations, jobs, studies and visa
statuses. 

The Justice Department began calling in citizens of the
first five countries last month. The list of countries was
expanded on Nov. 6 to include Afghanistan, Algeria,
Bahrain, Eritrea, Lebanon, Morocco, North Korea, Oman,
Qatar, Somalia, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates and
Yemen. Their deadline is Jan. 10. 

Today, the Justice Department added Armenia, Pakistan and
Saudi Arabia to the program, with a reporting deadline of
Feb. 21. 

The program does not apply to permanent residents, those
who were granted or applied for asylum before Nov. 6, or
diplomats and their dependents. 

John Reed, an immigration lawyer and former State
Department official, filed suit late last week seeking to
halt detentions under the program. He compared the program
with the roundups of Germans during World War I and the
internment of the Japanese during World War II. 

"It's outrageous," Mr. Reed said. "This is another example
of the government overreacting to a threat." 

Under the program, a foreign-born man from one of the
selected countries appears before an I.N.S. clerk and is
asked for his parents' names and addresses, the names and
addresses of American contacts, his e-mail address and a
form of identification other than his passport and
immigration document. 

He is also digitally photographed and fingerprinted, with
both the picture and the prints run immediately against
various criminal and immigration service databases. He is
also asked how he arrived in the United States and when, as
well as whether he has any connection to terrorist
organizations. 

Lawyers who have sat in on the proceedings said they found
them chilling. "When you're in this room and everybody
around you is a Middle Eastern man, it really sinks in,"
said Jacqueline Baronian, an immigration lawyer in New
York. "It looks like people are being rounded up, and it's
very, very disturbing." 

Ms. Baronian and other lawyers said that if a man was found
to be violating the terms of his visa, he was turned over
to an investigation officer and detained. If the violation
is minor, bond is set at $1,500 to $7,500, according to
those who have been through the process. 

One such man, who would not give his name because he said
he was a member of a prominent Iranian Jewish family in Los
Angeles, said he came to register last Tuesday and was
immediately detained because his pending application for
permanent residency had been held up in I.N.S. proceedings
for five years. 

The man, whose family fled Iran after the 1979 revolution,
is an Israeli citizen but came to the United States in 1997
to be reunited with his family. 

He spent all of Tuesday in the federal building lockup in
Los Angeles, where he said he saw dozens of men in similar
circumstances. He then was taken by bus to a jail in
Pasadena, where he spent the night. He was later taken to
an detention center in Lancaster, about 40 miles north of
Los Angeles, where his father-in-law put up $1,500 bail to
get him out on Thursday afternoon. 

"This was the most embarrassing thing that ever happened to
me," the man said. "I am very respected in the business
community here and I was just trying to do the right thing,
to help solve the problem this country has with terrorism."


He added: "We were treated like animals in Iran and all I
want is for my kids to grow up and say they're proud to be
Americans. But until the day I die, I'm going to be a
foreigner in this country, because of the way I look and my
accent."

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/17/politics/17IMMI.html?ex=1041131549&ei=1&en=960b51e32022f98e



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