Fear mounts as US rounds up thousands of Muslim men for registration
December 18 2002
Critics say the Pentagon's tough anti-terrorism laws will be
counter-productive, write John Broder and Susan Sachs from Los Angeles.
Lines began forming before dawn outside the federal building in Los Angeles
as hundreds of men from five Muslim countries came to register with
immigration authorities under a sweeping national dragnet designed to
identify potential terrorists.
The United States Attorney-General, John Ashcroft, issued an order last
month requiring male non-citizens over the age of 16 from 18 countries,
mostly Arab and Muslim, to be interviewed, photographed and fingerprinted
by federal authorities.
The program affects tens of thousands of immigrants 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 Monday.
Early that morning, the Los Angeles headquarters of the Immigration
Naturalisation Service was ringed with hundreds of immigrants accompanied
by anxious relatives and immigration lawyers.
Over the past week, 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 others they
could not provide adequate documentation of their immigration status.
An immigration lawyer, Ali Bolour, said that at one point on Friday,
officials ran out of plastic handcuffs as they herded men into the basement
lockup of the federal building.
Advocates for immigrant rights said the program had sent waves of fear
through immigrant communities and said it was unlikely to make the US
safer. "All this is doing is making a bigger haystack, not finding more
needles," said Angela Kelley, deputy director of the National Immigration
Forum, a pro-immigration group.
The original list of five countries was expanded on November 6 to include
Afghanistan, Algeria, Bahrain, Eritrea, Lebanon, Morocco, North Korea,
Oman, Qatar, Somalia, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen. On
Monday, Armenia, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia were added.
John Reed, an immigration lawyer and former State Department official,
filed suit late last week seeking to halt detentions under the program.
He compared it with the round-ups 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."
The round-up came as a Government advisory panel recommended an independent
domestic spy agency be created to ferret out possible terrorist cells on US
soil, much to the dismay of senior FBI officials.
If the recommendation, unveiled on Monday is accepted, it could result in
the FBI being transformed into a mere federal police force.
In Washington, the White House distanced itself from a Pentagon directive
that would authorise the military to carry out covert operations to
influence public opinion and policy-makers in friendly and neutral countries.
Its spokesman, Ari Fleischer, said the Bush Administration realised that
the US had to work harder in communicating America's message, but it should
not be presumed that the idea had advanced very far.
The New York Times
http://smh.com.au/articles/2002/12/17/1039656391236.html
