No Reprieve in Special Registration Program: Deadline extensions do little to allay fears
February 28, 2003
At 1 p.m on Friday, Feb. 21, Muhammad Nouman found himself standing alone in the near-empty Federal Plaza, in New York City, eyes wide. Though he had waited patiently in line since 9 a.m., Nouman had yet to reach the lobby of the Immigration and Naturalization Service office. And although service hours officially extend until 3:30 p.m., he and countless others were told to go home and return another day.
Already, the college junior says, he has missed two days of classes trying to call on the INS. An IT major at a public university, Nouman arrived in New York City three years ago to seek greater educational opportunities and join his cousin and sister, a citizen, in Queens. Failure to report to the INS under the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System (NSEERS) for registration, fingerprinting and questioning, however, means an automatic ticket back to Pakistan and three years’ tuition for naught.
“We didn’t do anything wrong, yet my future is at risk,” he says. “If they’re not going to register me, I’m totally screwed. If they call people in and they know a lot of people are coming, then they should arrange for them to register.”
Over 200 activists mobilized by groups including Desis Rising Up and Moving, the Council on Pakistani Organizations, the Coney Island Avenue Project and the National Korean American Education & Service Consortium, filled Federal Plaza hours earlier, demanding an immediate end to what they deem an unjust, inhumane and ineffective national security measure.
The Department of Justice has extended the deadline for the program’s third “call-in” group — male visitors over age 15 from Pakistan and Saudi Arabia — to March 21, and for the fourth — Bangladeshis, Egyptians, Indonesians, Jordanians and Kuwaitis — to April 28, in an effort to “minimize its impact on those required to register.” But affected members of these and 19 other mostly Muslim and Arab communities continue to grapple with a bewildering vacuum of guidance or agency capacity.
Nouman says he intends to try again, perhaps with a lawyer referred by his professor. “I hope I find the right person. People I know were asked to say what flight number, what boarding pass number they had — this from years ago. All I want to do is finish my studies.”
Though thousands of “non-immigrants” have been detained since the implementation of NSEERS in December, as an immigration procedure it can — and does — exclude lawyers and consular officials from accompanying the registered during interrogation.
Communities are understandably fearful and face few options, if they even know of them. Dozens of legal clinics organized by community groups in the past few months have reached only a fraction of those affected. The Queens office of the Islamic Circle of North America reported fielding over 1,400 queries in the past month alone.
An Anti-Terrorism Agenda
The Department of Justice describes the special registration program as a subsidiary of the comprehensive entry-exit system mandated by a 1996 law that required stricter control over “ports of entry.” However, only visitors from 25 countries have been tapped for registration. According to Department of Justice spokesperson Jorge Martinez, 150 countries are required to register at U.S. “ports of entry,” an initiative that has secured 40,406 enrollments. As of Feb. 20, according to official estimates, the total number of visitors who complied with special registration is 41,128, of the 43,000-plus who have been required to register nationally.
The program’s opponents dispute those figures, as over 160,000 “non-immigrants” from the listed countries alone entered New York City as the first port of entry in 2001, according to the INS’ own data.
Martinez considers the special registration program a remarkable success. Since December, he reports 504 “enforcement actions” which included the arrest of wanted felons, aliens with criminal convictions, and individuals with prior immigration violations. The Department of Justice also maintains that NSEERS has netted 37 known criminals and identified eight “suspected terrorists” to date, but would not say through which NSEERS program (“some” from both is as far as Martinez would specify).
“After the tragic events of September 11, [special registration] is a key enhancement effort in the security measure. One terrorist is too many; eight is quite immense,” says Martinez.
He cites the capture of a twice-convicted child molester of Iranian descent in California and of another who had been convicted twice of grand theft and cocaine trafficking. Also, a Florida flight school student who did not report for his interview.
The Department of Justice maintains that no visitors have yet been deported after appearing for special registration, and that detention is temporary until a background check is conducted. “All the people who are detained are here illegally,” says Martinez. “They’ve broken the law of the country, there must be appropriate action … America is free, and we have the liberties we have because we have law and order.”
Red Flags Raised In
Washington
But a handful of the nation’s top lawmakers have begun to raise concerns about NSEERS. Less than two months after the program’s hushed implementation in December, some lawmakers returning to session in January have attempted to halt, or at least slow, NSEERS, absent any legislative scrutiny.
On Jan. 22, the Senate passed a version of the massive omnibus appropriations bill with an amendment by Sens. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.), John McCain (R-Ariz.), Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) and Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) ordering the suspension of special registration program funding until Attorney General John Ashcroft provides a report to Congress detailing the origin, scope and effectiveness of the program.
That amendment was stripped down in the bill’s final version, passed by the House early this month. Although Ashcroft is still required to make his case for NSEERS by March 1, funding is not conditional to his compliance, and a $38-million provision to fund a pilot border patrol program along the Mexican and Canadian borders remained as well. The NSEERS program, according to the Department of Justice, spent $5 million in its first month.
A group of congressional representatives has issued a similar challenge. Late last month, Reps. Joseph Crowley (D-N.Y.), Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), Jim McDermott (D-Wash.), Sheila Jackson Lee and Robert Wexler (D-Fla.) — all members of the House Bangladesh Caucus — penned a letter to Ashcroft demanding an explanation and supporting evidence behind the Department of Justice’s decision to add Bangladesh to the NSEERS list and requested the nation’s removal otherwise. In addition, they insist he disclose the criteria used to determine which countries are placed on the NSEERS list.
According to Legislative Assistant Gregg Sheiowitz, Rep. Crowley took action after his constituents, residents in Queens and the Bronx, approached his office with distressing concerns about the program’s impact in their communities.
Says Sheiowitz, “The INS and DOJ have not consulted Congress before they initiated this program.” He also cites the staggering number of compliant registrants detained in California in December. “It sounds like the Administration is just paying us lip service on this program [as an anti-terrorism measure] when it’s only going to affect hardworking people and students.”
Rep. Crowley opposes the special registration requirement and supported the effort to suspend its funding. But whether more colleagues will follow suit remains to be seen.
Immigrant advocates say the Department of Justice’s handing-off of the INS to the Department of Homeland Security next week is symptomatic of its intensifying lock-down approach toward immigration. Aarti Shahani, organizer and advocate for the nascent Families for Freedom coalition, rejects the line that NSEERS culls the dangerous from the decent.
“There are plenty of people who are deported for crimes unrelated to national security,” she says. “The government is bringing tough-on-crime rhetoric and the anti-drug rhetoric into anti-immigrant rhetoric.” Regarding the hardened criminals NSEERS has reportedly caught, she asserts, “These are people who did their time in the criminal justice system, and that’s it. You don’t give people a life sentence of exile for that.”
Comments
Got something to say?