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The crackdown
by Robert Younes
The United States is moving
to deport 13,000 Arabs and Muslims to the Middle East. These are men and
woman who came to the US to seek a better life and were subsequently
caught up in the wave of hysteria about Middle Easterners after the
tragedy of 11 September 2001.
Almost all of the people
involved have either overstayed their visas, entered the US illegally, or
have an infraction of US immigration laws. Armed with new legislation, it
appears that the Bush administration is applying the laws without
exception and without exercising any discretion when reviewing individual
cases.
One case in point is that of
Malek Zaidan, a Syrian national who was arrested by chance and jailed when
it was discovered that he had overstayed his six-month tourist visa by 14
years. Zaidan was a successful canary breeder living peacefully in New
Jersey. Although a thorough investigation of his background revealed no
involvement in illegal or terrorist activities, he faces deportation from
the US based on his visa violation.
Arabs and Muslims constitute a
very small proportion of the estimated 3.2 to 3.6 million persons in the
US who are "out of status", and the eight million who are undocumented,
yet Arabs and Muslims are the prime target of this initiative. The
majority of the more than 300,000 foreign nationals sought by the Bureau
of Citizenship and Immigration Services (BCIS) -- a division of the newly
formed Department of Home Land Security and formerly the Immigration and
Naturalisation Services -- for ignoring deportation orders are Hispanic.
Nonetheless, the Justice Department is choosing to target those who fit
the "terrorist profile" first -- young men of Middle Eastern background.
The number of persons who will
actually be "removed" from the US as a result of this programme is
uncertain, but US Attorney-General John Ashcroft has already removed more
Arabs and Muslims, who were neither terrorists nor criminals, from the US
in the past year than the total number of foreign nationals deported in
the infamous Palmer raids of 1919.
In 2002, the number of people
deported rose from 1,264 in 2001 to 2,760. People from the Middle East
represent only nine per cent of the total 150,000 to 180,000 -- mainly
Mexicans -- who are deported every year. But Muslims and Arabs are being
unfairly singled out due to a strict application of immigration
procedures.
The US government has also
initiated controversial restraints on the civil liberties of every
American. Particularly frightening is the government's continuous racial,
religious and ethnic profiling of Arabs, Muslims and South Asians. The
latest in the government's series of ill-conceived and discriminatory
policies is the implementation of the Special Call-In Registration System
requiring all non-immigrant men over the age of 16 who are from a list of
18 Muslim countries, North Korea and Eritrea to register in person at
immigration offices and to check in regularly with the government every
year thereafter.
BCIS officials contend that
the crackdown is part of a larger programme that intends to register all
who enter and exit the US in order to improve control of its borders and
those who live within the US. Critics charge that the enormous cost of the
programme does not justify the human and monetary costs. Only 11
individuals from the Middle East have been deported who may have had
possible links to terrorism.
In addition, a recent Justice
Department report found "significant problems" in the way that many
immigrants arrested after 11 September were treated. Many were chained and
verbally abused, held without bail and denied access to lawyers. Worse
yet, many arrested after 11 September were held incommunicado for months
on the basis of secret evidence to which the detainees and defence
attorneys were denied access.
One report on National Public
Radio described the separation of a Syrian family who had been in America
for more than 12 years. Three of their four children, all American-born,
were placed in detention with their parents and another was placed in a
government children's centre.
Secret evidence has been used
in dozens of cases and immigration officials assert that national security
concerns are the basis for depriving the right of immigrants to examine
and confront adverse witnesses and evidence. Further, critics argue that
the government has done more to unravel the rights guaranteed by the
American Constitution than any terrorist has ever done.
Mazen Al-Najjar, a stateless
Palestinian, began his ordeal when he was detained in 1997 on the basis of
secret evidence. He was jailed without trial for three years. The Justice
Department claimed that he was involved in terrorist activities and had
violated his visa. He was released on a judge's order and then re-
arrested. He was finally deported to Bahrain which refused to accept him.
He was unceremoniously dumped at the Beirut Airport without approval of
Lebanese authorities.
The use of secret evidence was
first authorised by the 1996 anti-terrorism bill that followed the World
Trade Centre and Oklahoma City bombings. Judges have tended to side with
the defendant after examining the secret evidence used to incarcerate the
immigrant. The Immigration Service, in response, has often appealed the
ruling or defied the judge's order. For the first time, on 20 October
1999, a federal court weighed the constitutionality of the use of secret
evidence and found it unconstitutional. Federal District Judge William
Walls held that "the government's reliance on secret evidence violates the
due process protections that the constitution directs must be extended to
all persons within the United States, citizens and resident aliens alike."
Muslim and Arab groups have
lobbied aggressively to repeal secret evidence laws. The Council on
American-Islamic Relations, says "secret evidence is unconstitutional and
is used disproportionately against members of the Muslim and Arab-American
communities. Almost all of the individuals held based on secret evidence
are Muslims and Arabs." CAIR argues that "the basic guarantee to due
process of law contained in the constitution should not be denied to
anyone."
However, the Supreme Court
handed a victory to the Bush administration when it refused to hear a
challenge to closed, secret deportation hearings held for hundreds of
immigrants detained after the 9/11 attacks.
Racial profiling, according to
David Harris, author of Profiles in Injustice, uses "race or ethnic
appearance as a broad predictor of who is involved in a crime or
terrorism". As a de facto policy, racial profiling dismisses the legal
principles of "innocent until proven guilty" and "preponderance of
evidence", and instead relies on "probable cause", "reasonable suspicion"
and, perhaps most importantly, "compelling interest" to justify arbitrary
interrogations and detentions. In effect, racial profiling constitutes the
criminalisation of entire groups within the US. Racial profiling is the
domestic counterpart of Bush's new foreign policy based on preemptive
strikes: profiling and preemption work together to define the human
targets of the "war on terror".
Objectionable on legal and
political grounds, racial profiling of Arabs and others from the Middle
East is also a particularly imprecise law enforcement mechanism given the
tendency in the US to confuse and collapse Arabs and Muslims into one
category, or to misidentify South Asians, Latinos, Africans and others as
Arab Muslims. In the case of Arabs, racial profiling is premised on
equating an "Arab-looking" person with terrorism.
On 11 September 2002, the
Immigration and Naturalisation Service (INS), then part of the Department
of Justice, began implementing a broad programme of "special registration"
for certain "non-immigrant aliens" resident in the United States to
facilitate the "monitoring" of people so registered "in the interest of
national security". The body of rules governing special registration is
now referred to as the National Security Entry and Exit Registry System (NSEERS).
Registration is mandatory. Non-compliance and lack of truthful disclosure
upon registration are grounds for deportation, and Attorney-General John
Ashcroft declared that those failing to register upon exiting the US can
be barred from subsequent re-entry.
Clearly the American
government is cracking down on violations of US immigration laws on the
books in the United States. It took 11 September to galvanise the congress
to fund this effort. Most Americans support the actions of Homeland
Security in its attempts to secure US borders, especially those who
successfully jumped through the many hoops needed to gain legal residency
and citizenship. Through years of immigration service under-funding, the
enforcement laxity built into the system is now being remedied, much to
the chagrin of those living in the United States under questionable
circumstances.
The writer is a retired physician
living in Maryland and active as an advocate for Palestinian rights and
justice.
Source:
by courtesy & © 2003 Al-Ahram weekly & Robert Younes
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