Suspicious by definition
Muslims in the United States are standing up and fighting against discrimination, writes Negar Azimi
Four American Muslim groups have filed a lawsuit against United States Attorney General John Ashcroft and federal immigration officials at the Immigration and Naturalisation Service (INS) over the detention of hundreds of Muslim men in California last month.
The coalition, composed of the Arab-American Anti- Discrimination Committee, the Alliance of Iranian Americans, the Council on American-Muslim Relations and the National Council of Pakistani Americans, filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles Federal Court on 24 December, alleging that immigration officials unlawfully arrested and detained men between 16 and 18 December in the state of California. Immigration lawyers say that between 500 and 1,000 men who had voluntarily come to register themselves under new security legislation were detained and, according to some accounts, strip- searched and interrogated amidst inhumane conditions.
Federal officials tell a different version. Official estimates placed the number of arrests at 227 -- all registered for overstaying visas, though some INS accounts have recently shifted the estimate to over 400. INS spokesman Francisco Arcaute has refuted allegations surrounding the inhumane nature of the detentions: "We understand there has been a bit of crowding, but my understanding is that we are meeting basic needs."
Meanwhile, immigration lawyers have said that many of the detained were in the midst of the arduous process of obtaining green cards or simply in limbo with minor visa complications.
Since last month, Muslim men have lined up en masse at immigration offices to be registered. The new measures are part of a large- scale security crackdown in the aftermath of 11 September, targeting men from more than 20 Arab and Muslim nations who lack permanent resident status in the US.
On the first anniversary of the September attacks, the US government launched the National Security Entry Exit Registration System (NSEERS), initially targeting males over the age of 16 from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Sudan -- requiring them to be interviewed, photographed and fingerprinted by federal authorities. Persons in question must also submit information surrounding their job, visa and student status in routine fashion.
An additional 13 countries were added to the list in October. California is among the first states where non-resident men have been forced to register, while other states have been given later dates.
The coalition of interest groups argues that it is illegal to arrest and deport people who are eligible to apply for legal status based on employment or family ties. Furthermore, they argue that detainees are being held without bail or bond and are subject to deportation without due process. The groups have demanded an injunction, ordering the government to refrain from arresting additional persons without appropriate warrants from federal judges, as well as an order preventing the deportation of detainees without due process. When last contacted, the INS declined to comment on the nature of the demands or the lawsuit at large.
In Los Angeles in particular, the Justice Department's new security measures involving Muslim men have provoked controversy amidst the sizeable Iranian-American community, where roughly 600,000 Iranians -- most of them living in exile in the aftermath of the 1979 Islamic Revolution -- make their home. An estimated 3,000 took to the streets in a peaceful protest on 18 December following the detentions. Protesters carried banners reading, "What's next? Concentration camps?" and "What happened to liberty and justice?"
The new measures have sent waves of fear through American Muslim communities. Babak Sotoodeh of the Alliance of Iranian- Americans told Al-Ahram Weekly that "the Iranian-American community is outraged at the maltreatment that its members have been receiving at the hands of the INS." He continued: "We have been receiving and documenting the horror stories of defenceless Iranian immigrants, who, in their efforts to be law- abiding citizens and to comply with the call of President Bush to combat terrorism by complying with the special registration law, have come to INS offices and have faced wholesale arrests, without any proper justification."
Aslam Abdullah, member of the executive board of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, said the council has received hundreds of complaints.
Meanwhile, critics argue that it is unlikely that a terrorist would be discovered as part of a voluntary registration programme. Similar comments have been made in the context of the INS's restrictions set on refugee admissions, an arduous process that is also unlikely to attract those guilty of terrorist acts.
"The US government is now treating immigration policy and national security policy as if they were the same thing. Of course they can be related, but they are not and cannot be the same, since very few visitors and immigrants pose a security problem and security problems come from domestic and international sources," said Hussein Ibish of the Arab- American Anti-Discrimination Committee in an interview with the Weekly. "Alien registration, especially based on national origin discrimination, neither adds to security nor contributes to a rational approach to managing immigration and immigrants. Any security policy which boils down to ethnic stereotyping, as this in the end does, is bound to be a failed policy. Security threats do not correspond to such a cookie-cutter approach."
The Justice Department expanded its list of countries of concern on 6 November to include Algeria, Bahrain, Eritrea, Lebanon, Morocco, North Korea, Oman, Qatar, Somalia, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen. In mid-December, the list was further expanded to include Armenia, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.
Says Ibish: "The attitude of the government here is clear: Arabs and Muslims, especially young Arab men, are, by definition, suspicious, potentially dangerous and of special interest to the authorities. This thinking produces the discriminatory policies we are witnessing. It will be a long struggle to successfully combat this discrimination."
