Posted on 12/17/2002 7:38:48 AM PST by dead
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.
I guess I got "rounded up", when I had to fill out draft registration card. Oh, and I got "rounded up" again when I got my driver's license.
It is necessary!
Thanks for posting the article, dead.
...where they were machinegunned to death by Zionist hit squads and their remains were minced for inclusion in frozen TV-dinner Passover meals.
Geez, talk about frenzied whining.
I, a US citizen, had handcuffs put on me for drinking a beer in public. And they were friggin' metal! Not nice soft plastic.
I should have been aggrieved and traumatized, but I just paid my ticket and was released into the custody of a licensed bartender.
Fear mounts as US rounds up thousands of Muslim men for registration
Terribly misleading statement! The US has issued a request for foreigners from "terrorist"-labeled to register...........something the INS should have been doing all along.
The use of the phrase 'rounding up' is offensive to me and says more abou the agenda of the writer of the article thanb anything else.
If they had Bin Ladens fingerprints, would the skyline of New York look any different now
Probably not, but if they had fingerprinted and run background checks on Mohammed Atta and the other 18 scumbags on those airplanes, the skyline would look a lot different.
And 3,000 US citizens would still be alive.
There is nothing outrageous about this, they are not citizens, they don't like it they are welcome to return to their respective desert wastelands.
You think that's bad? I hear they also ran out of tea and finger-sandwiches for the people waiting in line, and had to give them coffee and donuts instead.
Clearly, this kind of treatment is brutal and uncivilized. These people have a right to the same cocktails-in-a-comfy-chair treatment I get when I go to the DMV....
Facing Registry Deadline, Men From Muslim Nations Swamp Immigration Office
No Ms. Kelley, you are lying. Continued immigration of your dangerous friends is what makes the haystack bigger. This registration kinda sorts the hay into piles.
There are lots of scumbags out there that stay up nights thinking of ways to breach security. I would think that background checks would be easy to circumvent.
Let’s make them work a little, OK?
Why do you want to make their job any easier?
On the list: Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Pakistan and perhaps others
But, missing are these: Jordon, Kuwait, Egypt
Perhaps they are ommitted for political reasons. But there are bad apples in a barrel.
Timothy McVeigh was from what country
Your logic is retarded.
Some people get away with murder, so let’s not lock up any murderers.
I ask again – why do you want to make the job of terrorism easier?
http://www.smh.com.au/contacts/index.html
To the contrary - profiling is based on statistics, and the probability of the "white male non-muslim ex-military terrorist" is near null. The statistics still hold valid.
Besides - would he have been able to do it without the assistance and encouragement of Jose Padilla (aka John Doe #2)?
The U.S. has got to take a role in easing world tensions using means other then humanitarian aid.
The “easing world tensions” shibboleth does not apply to Muslim fanatics. They are not killing us because of Palestine or Saudi Arabia or the Kyoto agreement.
They are killing us because we will not agree to adopt their faith and live under a global islamic caliphate.
The only way to “ease” that tension is to agree to their terms and I will not.
I think the dispute centers around real estate.
If that is really what you think, then you are sadly mistaken.
Hezbollah might be about real estate.
Al Qaeda is about establishing a global caliphate (if by “real estate” you mean all of it, then I guess you could be considered correct.)
Good point about McVeigh though. As in that attack, there are domestic dangers here. Unlike, the one-off fluky McVeigh, however, these elements constitute an ongoing and immediate threat. I'm refereing, of course to the likes of the US-born al-Qada groupies arrested in New York and Washington State, Jose Padilla, DC sniper Mohammad, and Johnny Walker Lindh. All of these maniacs, of course, sprang from the same terrorist-topsoil, Islam, which is why it's so important to reduce the spread of that ideology here by banning all immigration from Muslim countries.
You must have been wasted, right? No sane police officer handcuffs a person for drinking a beer in public, I hope.
(ah, youth)
Jeez! I didn't know being forced to listen to elevator music while standing in line would be so traumatic to some folks. P'haps something more appropriate would keep them from stampeding. I always thought 'Git Along Little Doggies' was pretty soothing.
YOU ARE A FUNNY PERSON! I laughed for 5 minutes after reading your 'add-on'.
I am sure that is the intention. In reality it just provides the gov't with exciting new opportunities for screwing things up. I am confident that the real terrorists will continue to do as they please, while totally screwing up the lives of random innocent people who happen to have the same name as an actual terrorist.
Just imagine what effect gun registration would have on criminals. To assume that this registration will be more succesful is wishful thinking.
One whos government let a federal building be blown up, and let the act be blamed on a patsy, just to further its totalitarian globalist agenda.
I'll bet plenty are in the deportation process.
I showed up for one of them interviews about 28 years ago. Not only did they photograph and fingerprint us, they stuck us full of needles, cut our hair, took our civilian clothes, detained and indoctrinated us about six months, loaded us on a warship, and sent us to the Middle East, and then points beyond for several years.
Just like I was told: If these guys swear allegiance to, and maintain a good attitude toward the U.S., they will be much happier and proud to be here.
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