Year in Review - 2002 (Feature) No Exit: Another Act in American Immigration Policy, Post-Sept. 11 (in National News) Upcoming Welfare Cut to Hurt APA Families (in Bay Area News) Ultimate Diversions: 2002 Gamer's Gift Guide (11/29/02) (in Consumer) APA Community Should Tell Shaquille O’Neal to ‘Come down to Chinatown.’ (in Sports) Hot ‘n’ Sour: Primal Scream (in A&E) INS Roundups Put Nation’s Growing Ethnic Media in Bind (in Opinion)

No Exit: Another Act in American Immigration Policy, Post-Sept. 11

By Shirley Lin | Special to AsianWeek

On Dec. 16, hundreds of Middle Eastern men who appeared on time to register with a vast federal tracking program found themselves arrested, detained and under threat of deportation. With the next registration deadline fast approaching, immigrant and civil rights advocates are urging immigrants to comply with a government directive they believe is discriminatory, unconstitutional and a “pretext for mass detention.”

The penalty for failing to register for the program on time? Arrest and deportation.

In November, the Immigration and Naturalization Service issued with minimal publicity an order for men from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan and Syria aged 16 or over to register at the local INS office. The thousands who reported to the INS office in Los Angeles to comply found bureaucratic chaos; as many as 700 individuals were reported jailed, some transported to holding centers across state lines and back under poor conditions. While the INS has not been forthcoming with specific numbers, it claims only 400 were taken into custody at that office. Accounts of arrests and detentions linked to the special registration have trickled in from Ohio, Colorado and Minnesota as well.

Under the new National Security Entry-Exit Registration System (NSEERS), the Department of Justice requires “nonimmigrant” men — mainly visiting students, workers, and relatives — age 16 and over from a list of 20 countries to register with the INS, and be fingerprinted, photographed and interrogated. They are subsequently required to check in regularly with the agency. The measures are designed to help the government “identify wanted criminals and known terrorists entering our borders.”

Attorney General John Ashcroft, who announced the program in June, believes the policing of such visitors is necessary to root out terrorists. The system, he said, “will expand substantially America’s scrutiny of those foreign visitors who may pose a national security concern and enter our country.”

Demanding an End

Immigrant and civil rights groups, apprehensive when the initiative was first announced, have demanded an end to the program since the collective arrests in California.

“This is another level of racial profiling and surveillance of targeted communities,” said Monami Maulik, executive director of the grassroots advocacy group Desis Rising Up and Moving (DRUM). “In the past year we’ve seen a number of different strategies of the Justice Department, from racial and religious profiling at the airports to selective enforcement of the Absconder Initiative.”

Like the Absconder Initiative implemented by Ashcroft earlier this year, NSEERS formally fast-tracks the arrest of Middle Eastern immigrants who have overstayed their visas — and integrates their data into the National Crime Information Center system, the federal criminal database accessed by 650,000 local law enforcement officials across the country.

“The hypocrisy of the Bush administration is underscored by the fact that it is willing to criticize Trent Lott for a public racist comment while pursuing the most racist immigration policy in American history,” said William Goodman, director of the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights.

Meanwhile, the INS insists that this system had been planned years before the Sept. 11 attacks. “We were required by Congress back in 1996 to start working on a system that will be complete by the year 2005. It is a system that will provide information about every person who enters this country on a non-immigrant visa. It’s something that Congress foresaw many years ago and this is the first step in the process of implementing that entire system,” INS spokesperson Sharon Rummery said. “It’s a way we can have contact to have better control of the non-immigrants who enter our country to visit, to work, to study, whatever. Through this process, they are going to come in and report.”

Backlog = Detainment

Robin Goldfaden, staff counsel of the ACLU’s Immigrant Rights Project, found the decision to detain deeply troubling. “That the government will lock up people rather than develop the capacity to register them by the deadline, or give them a form saying they had attempted to register by the deadline, is a problematic statement.”

Groups are already bracing for the Jan. 10 deadline for the next round of registrations, which applies to men from Afghanistan, Algeria, Bahrain, Eritrea, Lebanon, Morocco, North Korea, Oman, Qatar, Somalia, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen. Those with temporary visas from Pakistan and Saudi Arabia must register by Feb. 21.

“These are the countries of the greatest concern to the U.S., these are the places that al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations are active or there are other good reasons we have national security concerns about the people from these specific countries,” Rummery said. “We’re eventually going to enter people from every country who come to America on non-immigrant visas. We simply had to pick someplace to start. And of course, we picked those countries that are of the deepest concern.”

Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said advocates in her area are concerned that the next wave of registrations will have a chilling impact in New York City, with “entire immigrant communities being terrorized by the prospect of punitive detention and selective deportation.”

Many community and advocacy groups have also found fault with the inadequate notice given to communities affected by the registration requirements, especially since the Justice Department has stated failure to register is a criminal offense that will lead to deportation.

What’s more, according to ACLU’s Goldfaden, a “significant percentage” of the people detained in December have pending adjustment of status applications, a procedure to gain permanent residency status, and were disserved by INS’s notorious backlog in paperwork. Permanent residents are exempt from the registration requirement.

Critics of the new initiative also point out that the majority of the information that would be culled through the registrations is already included in immigrants’ initial green card applications.

Rummery defended the INS in terms of inefficiency: “We’re not concerned. We’ve been given this process to rule out and we’re doing the work that’s involved with it. I can’t help people’s conceptions … of us. We do a great job with the work. Think about how hard the work we do is. Think of how many people come into this county every year. Think about how many people are naturalized every year. We do terrific work. We do just great work.”

Tracking 100,000

The scale and specificity of the government’s efforts — the Justice Department aims to track 100,000 visitors in the program’s first year — invites comparisons to the racist internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.

“In our country’s history there have been times of a great deal of fear and trepidation in which there has been a real or perceived threat,” said Goldfaden. “During those times we have done things we have come to regret, and there are actions that the government has taken since Sept. 11 that are disturbingly and eerily reminiscent of those past tragedies.”

Nor is the registration program the government’s first effort to corral immigrants in an effort to combat terrorism. In the months after Sept. 11, DRUM joined forces with the Prison Moratorium Project and the Coalition for the Human Rights of Immigrants to mount a multi-tiered Campaign to Stop the Disappearances. Activists have been organizing educational legal clinics for newcomer communities throughout the city while demanding an end to the rounding-up and detention of South Asian, Middle Eastern and Muslim immigrants by the INS over the past 15 months. As many as 2,000 men have been detained by federal officials, but less than one percent have been charged with a crime related to terrorism.

Over the next month, a coalition of more than 35 advocacy groups plans to picket the INS headquarters in New York. Each Friday, protesters from groups including the Campaign to Stop Disappearances, the Council on American Islamic Relations, the ACLU, Not in Our Name, New York City Labor Against the War, and Nodutdol for Korean Community Development will demonstrate on Federal Plaza, calling for an end to the registration program. The coalition has also called for a public fax campaign directed at the offices of Ashcroft and INS District Director Edward McElroy to demand an end to “the frightening and dangerous incursion on civil rights.”

At the same time, community-based organizations like the Coney Island Avenue Project in Brooklyn will conduct know-your-rights clinics for residents. DRUM, the American Immigration Lawyers Association, the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, and the ACLU have urged affected individuals to request help from an immigrant attorney before and if possible during their registration, and set up hotlines for those seeking referrals or additional information.

Ji Hyun Lim contributed to this report.