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Detentions Mount Amid Official Silence

Activists demand an end to the “disappearances”

By Shirley Lin
Special to AsianWeek

They were picked up at work, at traffic stops, and in a number of cases, in the dead of night from their homes. The vast majority had routine immigration violations such as an expired visa, or were taken into custody for infractions as minor as speeding. But in a nation still jittey from terrorist threats, such missteps have given U.S. authorities license for unprecedented scrutiny and incarceration of immigrants. Demands for accountability continue to meet with official stonewalling, while communities directly devastated by heavy federal sweeps are only beginning to weigh their losses.

Detention by Suspicion

Ali Yaghi, 34, was one of over 1,200 Arab and South Asian Muslims picked up for questioning in the massive federal dragnet following the Sept. 11 attacks. A local business owner alerted authorities with a report that Yaghi — who is originally from Jordan — publicly rejoiced after the terrorist attacks, saying, “See what happens when you mess with the Middle East.” Yaghi was questioned once by the FBI, then taken into custody outside his Albany, N.Y. pizzeria in late September.

His wife Shokriea, who was visiting Jordan with their three sons at the time, questions the account of her husband’s reaction. “Right after [Sept. 11] happened, he called to let us know about the pain there,” she said.

Yaghi had been arrested once, for carrying a handgun without a permit, but said he kept it for personal safety after having been robbed three times delivering pizza. He had already served the full time for his conviction — six months in jail. Instead, the INS was concerned with an order of deportation issued for Yaghi after his student visa expired, in early 1990. He applied for his case to be reopened so he could apply for a green card after he married Shokriea, a U.S. citizen. But, according to his lawyer, the papers were not filed correctly. Unbeknownst to Yaghi, the deportation order remained, and gave the INS sufficient grounds to detain him more than five years later.

In October, Yaghi was shipped south and kept in solitary confinement at the Brooklyn, N.Y. Metropolitan Detention Center, a federal prison where many others detained in post-Sept. 11 investigations have been held. For over five months, he was kept incommunicado under the glare of bright lights and the unblinking eye of video surveillance for at least 23 hours a day — maximum security measures befitting a felon convicted of a violent crime, rather than a man in documentation limbo. The lone window in his cell was painted opaque white, preventing him from telling day from night and praying at observed hours. Yaghi was released to the general inmate population in April, a condition he considered an improvement. Then, on June 24, without even a notice to his family or his lawyer, he was deported to Amman, Jordan.

In addition to struggling to pay their attorney and meet daily living expenses, Shokriea says she has no choice but to appeal to the immigration system for her husband’s return.

“I’m fighting for my future and my children’s future,” she said. “I have to take care of them and get their father back. Jordan is not our home.” Shokriea has not seen Ali in over 15 months. As has been the case for nearly all the detainees, Yaghi was never charged with having any connection to terrorism.

Ali Yaghi.

Immigrant rights activists and civil libertarians say the aggressive, multi-agency terrorism probe launched by the Justice Department after Sept. 11 is using immigration status as the pretext for the incarceration of hundreds of innocent people. The U.S. government has been flexing its newest powers — secret evidence, clandestine immigration hearings and extended detention periods — in the name of safeguarding national security. The overwhelming majority of post-Sept. 11 detainees are Muslim men from South Asia or the Middle East, which many point to as ethnic and religious profiling in full force.

The government denies targeting any particular groups, and has viewed the deportations of detainees as a windfall to anti-terrorism efforts. As Assistant Attorney General Michael Chertoff told the Senate Judiciary Committee in November, “Let’s be clear, those are people who have essentially overstayed their welcome in this country … They don’t belong here.”

According to the INS, 188,000 people total were detained in 2001. The average length of stay, however, was 40 days. As with the Justice Department, the INS will not release demographics of the detention population. Said INS spokesperson Karen Kraushaar, “The investigations are not targeting nationalities or people of any creed or color. The investigations are intended to bring to justice those who attacked the U.S. on Sept. 11 and to prevent and disrupt the efforts of anyone who would perpetrate another terrorist attack.”

According to figures released by the Justice Department in late August, only 763 of the 1,200 people held after Sept. 11 were placed in custody for immigration violations, criminal violations, or court-ordered material witness warrants. Of those, the Justice Department says over half have been deported, under a third have been released from custody, and 52 remain in detention.

But community activists reject the above figures as gross undercounts, saying they fail to include those detained beyond 2001. Community groups count about 50 detainees locked up in the Metropolitan Detention Center alone, and over 1,000 in the New York and New Jersey jails combined. Calls from detainees requesting legal help have been trickling in from various states including Colorado, Texas, Louisiana and Maine. Monami Maulik, director of the Queens, N.Y.-based Desis Rising Up and Moving (DRUM), estimates the national Arab, South Asian, and Muslim detainee population at above 2,000.

Nancy Chang, a senior litigation attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, believes the numbers are key to public accountability. “There will be no way to determine what happened to the detainees and no way to hold the government accountable for its treatment of them, unless their names are revealed and groups concerned about their welfare are able reach out to them and hear their stories,” she said. “In the face of the serious charges of mistreatment we are hearing it’s critical that Americans learn what their government has been doing.”

Chang is one of the attorneys litigating Turkmen v. Ashcroft, a class-action suit brought against Attorney General John Ashcroft by seven detainees at the Metropolitan Detention Center who say they were repeatedly harassed and abused by jail guards. Community groups have been monitoring conditions of confinement and sharing the information with human rights groups such as Amnesty International, which issued a report this spring citing violations of international law, such as excessive shackling of detainees, inadequate exercise and delayed access to a lawyer.

In December, the Center for National Security Studies, the American Civil Liberties Union, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee and 19 other civil rights groups filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking the release of the identities of those arrested or detained in connection to the Sept. 11 investigation. Despite a federal court ruling in August ordering the data’s release, the Justice Department refused to publicize the names, locations, charges, or countries of origin of the detainees for fear, it said, of providing “a blueprint for terrorists” that would undermine current preemptive efforts.

Judge Gladys Kessler called the government’s arguments “unpersuasive,” noting that the government has already released the names of some detainees connected to al Qaeda. Her ruling would also keep secret only the names of any detainee designated as material witness to a terror investigation or who did not wish to be identified. “Secret arrests are a concept odious to a democratic society,” wrote Kessler. The order to release the names is currently stayed by a Justice Department appeal.

A Sept. 7 rally organized by Justice for Detainees and labor activists outside the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, N.Y.

While advocates for the detainees make their case in state and national courts, new immigrant communities have been hard-pressed to meet immediate needs at the local level. With pro bono civil rights and immigration lawyers working overtime, many detainees have turned to private lawyers. Community-based groups are also seeking funding to pay legal fees, support families of detainees who had served as sole breadwinner, and post bond in cases where detainees have been ordered release. According to Bobby Khan, lead organizer of the Brooklyn-based Coney Island Avenue Project (CIAP), the minimum amount needed to post bail ranges from $10,000 to $20,000.

Activists believe that the majority of detainees are being held in the New York and New Jersey area, where the most detailed accounts of arrests and neighborhood raids have surfaced through community networks. “We’ve seen situations where families are being broken up in a really violent way for bogus charges,” says Sarah Hussein, a community activist with CIAP. “The smallest things that the majority of Americans are not going to court for — it’s illogical. What has this community done? Why are we being targeted?”

According to Chang, “some came to the attention of the law enforcement officers because they asked them for traffic instructions or because their names are similar to the names of individuals sought in connection with a terrorism investigation. Others were turned in by overzealous security guards, police and neighbors who have relied on racial stereotypes rather than evidence of criminal suspicion.” The Justice Department did not return requests for the number of detainees formally charged with ties to terrorism.

Sin Yen Ling, an attorney with the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF), has handled about 40 detainee cases alone since last September. Despite the fact that many of her clients have lived in the United States for over a decade, they were taken in for immigration violations. She says many of her clients were asked point-blank, “How many times a day do you pray?” “Do you know Osama bin Laden?” “What do you think of 9-11 and the U.S. government’s activities about 9-11?”

Community activists say the arrests have not slowed since Sept. 11, leaving groups like CIAP scrambling to document each case and extend relief to families. In August, the group learned of 15 individuals picked up in one day along Brooklyn’s Coney Island Avenue, home to about 150,000 Pakistani immigrants. Expanded INS, FBI and local police scrutiny has had a chilling effect on residents.

Says Hussein, “If you had visited this street before 9-11, it was a thriving, busy community. But after 9-11 it’s a community that’s desolate and feels like it’s under siege — not just the undocumented, but those who have their visas, and are citizens.”

DRUM has undertaken a coalition campaign to “Stop the Disappearances,” a name that conjures up the thousands of innocent civilians and dissidents abducted by the Argentinean government in the late 1970s. According to Maulik, the campaign calls for the release of all immigrants held for immigration violations and the repeal of the USA PATRIOT Act, the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, and the Anti Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act.

"Our work around detention began long before Sept. 11, and what we’ve seen is the expansion of what was already in place,” Maulik says. The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) is a landmark law that pronounced removable any immigrant who has ever committed an aggravated felony — or even certain misdemeanors, such as jumping a turnstile. IIRIRA applied even if time had been served, and was effective retroactively. The USA PATRIOT Act, passed almost immediately after the attacks last fall, vastly expanded the powers of the executive branch to conduct domestic surveillance and expanded the definition of “terrorism” in terms constitutional watchdogs have denounced as overly broad.

But many residents are afraid to come forward or advocate on behalf of those arrested for fear of reprisal from the INS. Reports of even greencard holders getting picked up are not uncommon, and citizens are not spared scrutiny.

One Pakistani immigrant, a resident of Brighton Beach, NY, and a U.S. citizen, was visited by the FBI and INS at around 4:30 in the morning, questioned about a man he had never met and had his home canvassed. His mother suffered a near-fatal heart attack when authorities returned for a second pre-dawn visit. The man was not taken into custody.

A growing, concomitant concern among immigrant groups is the increased presence of local law enforcement officials during joint FBI and INS raids. Although police are traditionally barred from investigating immigrants for legal status unless they are victims or have committed a crime, New York residents give accounts of officers stopping to check for papers.

A definitive step toward eliding authorities’ roles is the Florida Department of Law Enforcement’s (FDLE) Domestic Security Task Force, which in July began cross-training a cadre of police officers statewide to serve as both law enforcers and federal INS agents. Governor Jeb Bush created the Task Force last December through a memorandum of understanding with Attorney General Aschroft, whose Justice Department also directs the INS. According to Kraushaar, FDLE’s initiative will be one of several pilot projects nationwide. At least five other law enforcement agencies have requested similar dual authority, she said, and declined to disclose further details.

Community groups say this blurring of roles becomes a problem when police are responsible for responding to crimes in the Arab, South Asian and Muslim communities.

“When they’re specifically targeting communities, how do you expect members of those communities to trust the police, knowing that if they report a crime, they won’t be picked up, arrested, or interrogated?” asks AALDEF’s Ling.

Margaret Cameron, coordinator of the Justice for Detainees coalition group, believes “all this does is increase the size of the haystack, and is not helping us find the needle. We’re drawing the police away from necessary and legitimate law enforcement activity, and we’re alienating the population that’s most likely in a position to inform authorities about actual threats to our security.”

Over the past year AALDEF has been rotating legal rights clinics in 18 immigrant neighborhoods throughout New York City in an effort to address Sept. 11 related hate crimes and continuing detentions.

The Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) has been able to connect families of detainees to crucial financial and legal help. Adem Carroll, ICNA’s Sept.11 relief coordinator, estimates that the group has provided over $300,000 in aid to nearly 200 families since December. But he estimates that an equal amount will be needed just to sustain this level of support — not counting legal funds — for the remainder of the year.

In addition to boosting collaboration and communication with other groups working with detainees nationwide, including the assembly of a national database of detainees, “education of our own community and development of social services is a priority. There’s a lot of work to be done,” says Carroll.

Other groups have expressed solidarity with the detainees and rallied against the government’s domestic offensive. When, for example, the Justice Department approached the American Postal Workers Union to participate in the TIPS Program, which, in its own words, would “allow American workers to share information they receive in the regular course of their jobs in public places and areas,” the New York Metro Area Postal Union and other locals responded with a resounding “No.”

“For us to ignore [current efforts] means that we’re ignoring a huge civil liberties violations in our midst,” said Cameron. “We may someday find ourselves behind those prison walls. Like canaries in the mineshaft, we fight for their lives or we lose our own.”