Immigrants Reel From Post 9/11 Policies
NCM Forum
New California Media, Elena Shore, Posted: Oct 22, 2002
Immigrants are the real targets in post-9/11 policy, representatives from the American Civil Liberties Union and the American Immigration Lawyers' Association said recently at a meeting with New California Media.
“The government’s activities target the most vulnerable group: immigrants, especially Muslims,” said ACLU attorney Jayashri Srikantiah. Through secret detentions and deportations, profiling based on ethnicity and a crackdown on the constitutional right to protest, the Bush administration’s new policies, she said, compromise the civil liberties of all Americans, and immigrants in particular.
The USA PATRIOT Act, conceived by Attorney General John Ashcroft shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, permits non-citizens to be incarcerated or detained based on mere suspicion of committing a terrorist act.
Over 1,200 people have been detained since Sept. 11, 2001, according to the ACLU. Nearly all of them are Arab, South Asian or Muslim. None were ever charged with crimes related to Sept. 11 or terrorism. The government has detained them in secret, refusing to release their names, charges or locations.
“There are planeloads of people that have been deported in the middle of the night,” said Randall Caudle, chair of the Santa Clara chapter of the American Immigration Lawyers’ Association. Fewer people are being detained now, he said, not because the government is setting them free, but because they are being deported secretly. According to the government’s own reports, at least 600 deportation proceedings have been held in secret since September 11, 2001.
This secrecy, Srikantiah said, makes it more difficult for people to exercise their constitutional right to have access to attorneys.
In another example of government secrecy, a “No Fly List” bars certain people from boarding flights by marking their plane tickets with an "S." Compiled and maintained in secret, this list of names is used by airlines to detain citizens and non-citizens alike.
Profiling based on ethnicity has become more acceptable, said Srikantiah. This marks a shift in public opinion since the terrorist attacks one year ago. “Suddenly, in the public view, it’s okay to be doing racial profiling.”
Racial profiling is also at the core of the Bush administration’s new immigration policies, said Caudle. Without approval from Congress, the Department of Justice has imposed new guidelines requiring immigrants from a list of predominantly Muslim nations to be photographed and fingerprinted upon arrival in the US and to register periodically with the INS.
Originally targeting immigrants from Iraq, Iran, Libya, Syria and the Sudan, the list has already expanded to nine countries and, according to recent secret memos, will soon apply to immigrants from 33 countries, Caudle said.
In an unprecedented move uniformly opposed by California police, the government is also attempting to involve local law enforcement in federal immigration laws. The names of immigrants who have overstayed their visas or have not registered with the INS will now be added to the National Crime Information Center Database, accessible to local law enforcement.
“This means that if you get pulled over, this is one of the databases that the police will check,” Srikantiah explained. “You could be pulled over for speeding and end up getting deported,” added Caudle.
Police departments in San Francisco, Oakland, San Mateo and San Jose refused to participate on the grounds that the investigation, based solely on ethnicity, age and gender, violated laws against racial profiling. In the Bay Area, only the Fremont police department agreed to conduct the interviews.
Increasing crackdowns on protests since Sept. 11, 2001 have also targeted Muslims and immigrants of Middle-Eastern descent. The Palestinian student group at San Francisco State University was put on probation following a pro-Palestinian counter-demonstration, while UC Berkeley has threatened severe sanctions against its pro-Palestinian demonstrators on campus. Non-citizens who engage in their First Amendment right of free speech can also be denied re-admission to the US under the USA PATRIOT Act.
A growing number of people are asking what can be done to challenge these policies, said ACLU advocate Sanjeev Bery. He praised the work of Oakland activists for encouraging local city councils not only to take a stand against the USA PATRIOT Act, but also to ask questions of the federal government. Bery proposed a six-month reporting process in which local elected leaders ask the federal government to report regularly on what library records have been searched, the number of wiretaps and the number of detainees being held in local areas.
“What I think we can all expect to see in the months ahead and the years ahead,” said Bery, “is this sort of grassroots effort to challenge the notion that everything the federal government does is okay.”
The ACLU has published a “Know Your Rights” pamphlet in seven languages, including Arabic, Farsi, Urdu, Punjabi and Hindi, to educate immigrants about what to do if they are stopped by the police, the FBI, or the INS. A hotline also provides access to pro-bono council. On July 4, the ACLU held a sparsely attended briefing with ethnic media.
Though non-citizens may be afraid to write about the government for fear of reprisal, Srikantiah said, the ethnic media is in a unique position to give a voice to those who are afraid. “This is a time to do more.”
The reason the Bush administration has been able to infringe on civil liberties and target immigrants and non-citizens, she said, is “because there's not enough backlash against this, and so the Department of Justice feels entitled to do anything it wants to do.”
The purpose of government secrecy is to prevent the media from reporting on these polices, said Sanjeev Bery. It is the role of the media, especially the ethnic media, he asserted, to write about what is going on.
Ethnic media is the key to creating change, said Srikantiah. “Media is the one group the Department of Justice is scared of.”
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