Ayatollah Ashcroft's Law: Christian Evangelist With Anti-Islamic Views On
Record
Ayatollah Ashcroft's Law
How U.S. Attorney-General, a Christian Evangelist With Anti-Islamic Views On
Record, Is Waging War On American Muslims
by Haroon Siddiqui
In the days following 9/11, George W. Bush provided exemplary leadership. He
was calm yet resolute. He was patient when most people wanted him to go hit
someone, anyone. He warned Americans not to ascribe collective guilt to
Arabs or Muslims for the actions of 19 terrorists.
"Unfortunately, the government's actions over the past 20 months are in
sharp contrast to its words," says Anthony Romero, executive director of the
American Civil Liberties Union.
"The war on terror quickly turned into a war on immigrants."
A report last week by the Justice department's own internal watchdog
skewered the government's harsh treatment of 762 illegal immigrants as part
of its post-9/11 "absconder initiative." But the Bush administration is
doing more than selectively rounding up Muslims violating immigration rules.
It is routinely ignoring due process, in violation of the Fifth Amendment
that applies to all residents of the U.S. It is jailing asylum seekers,
against international norms. It is fingerprinting and questioning legal
residents.
To see the full scope of Attorney-General John Ashcroft's trashing of
democratic traditions, you have to wade through his many initiatives,
details of which are shrouded in a veil of secrecy:
Registering Muslim men
The National Security Entry-Exit Registration System affects two sets of
people.
1) Non-citizens and non-green card holders from 25 nations. This was a
general cattle call, with no individual notification to the hundreds of
thousands on student, business or visitor visas. Yet non-compliance could
make one "permanently inadmissible."
About 83,000 people responded, including many illegals hoping to win
leniency. They didn't. About 13,000 have been marked for deportation. Rather
than risk arrest, thousands of others fled. About 15,000 Pakistanis alone
returned home or sought refuge in Europe or Canada, with 2,600 coming here.
The program caused particular havoc in Brooklyn's Pakistani community of
120,000, which has been nearly halved.
"These people were not terrorists," says Romero. "They came to the United
States for the same reason previous generations of immigrants did ...
grateful to be in a country where they could achieve a better life and live
in freedom."
2) Also fingerprinted and questioned were those arriving from, or associated
with, Syria, Libya, Iran, Iraq and Sudan.
"You may not even have visited those places," says Marshall Fitz of the
American Immigration Lawyers Association, from Washington, D.C.
"Inspectors at ports of entry have wide latitude" in deciding whom to haul
in. About 47,000 people are thought to have been detained.
Between the two programs, how many terrorists have been unearthed?
Eleven people were suspected of possible terrorist links. Yet none was
charged, or even detained.
Change of address
Millions of non-citizens, including legal permanent residents, were ordered
to notify the INS of any change of address.
When hundreds of thousands did, the Immigration and Naturalization Service
could not cope.
One office alone has 200,000 unprocessed forms.
"Each one of those 200,000 law-abiding immigrants is at risk of deportation
because of sloppy INS record-keeping and a draconian enforcement mindset,"
says Romero.
Worse, says Fitz, the INS is yet to match address forms to immigration
records.
Many can thus be charged for not complying with the new law when, in fact,
they may have.
Operation tarmac
A security sweep of sensitive workplaces, including airports ? an eminently
justifiable measure ? was extended to private firms supplying goods and
services to airports and airlines.
"People who had never set foot near an airport were dragged in," says Fitz.
How many terrorists were found in the mass arrests? None.
"Voluntary" interviews.
In "highly coercive" encounters, says Romero, people are asked about bank
accounts, mosque attendance and opinion about the U.S., in violation of
their constitutional rights to freedom of speech and religion.
Initially, 5,000 people between 18 and 33 were identified by the FBI for
questioning. In March last year, another 3,000 were called up.
Fewer than 20 were arrested. How many terrorists? None.
Mandatory detention of asylum seekers
Operation Liberty Shield was designed to protect America from terrorists
during the war on Iraq.
It authorized detention of anyone seeking asylum from 33 unnamed nations.
The program has since morphed into a new one. Anyone arriving from Haiti,
and not necessarily just from there, is being jailed.
Ashcroft's argument is not that they pose a danger but that such arrests
send a signal to would-be asylum seekers not to come, thus freeing the Coast
Guard for terrorist interdiction work.
To sum up: Ayatollah Ashcroft, a Christian evangelist with anti-Islamic
views on record, is waging war on American Muslims, rather than engaging in
an effective battle against terrorism.
Fritz: "It's not as if the government has made us any safer. Instead of
targeting terrorists, they are targeting immigrants. And they are making the
pile so big it's making it that much more difficult to find a terrorist in
that huge haystack."
Dalia Hashad of the American Civil Liberties Union: "Selective law
enforcement, religious, ethnic and racial profiling, holding people
incommunicado and conducting closed hearings should never happen in the
U.S."
Haroon Siddiqui is the Star's editorial page editor emeritus.
Copyright 1996-2003. Toronto Star Newspapers Limited.
http://www.thestar.com/
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