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Communities Brace for Second INS Registration Deadline

A protestor in front of the INS building in San Francisco, the sign around her neck says, "Japanese Americans 1942; Muslims, Arabs, Iranians, South Asians, 2002-2003; What's next?" Photo by Jennie Sue.

By Shirley Lin | Special to AsianWeek

Husain Qazi, a Jackson Heights jewelry store owner from Pakistan, could hardly contain his anger at the Immigration and Naturalization Services’ latest initiative aimed at Muslim communities.

“You have successfully tried to harass people, snatching food from the mouths of families, you have done what you wanted, Bush. But you forget that our ancestors tried to bury this racism years ago,” he said, referring to the hard-won gains of the civil rights movement.

Top: The Coney Island Avenue Project rallies outside INS offices in Jackson Heights, Queens; photo by Shirley Lin. Bottom photo: Protestors in front of the Immigration and Naturalization Services Building in San Francisco, photo by Jennie Sue.

In San Francisco, a week of rallies planned outside the INS office in the Embarcadero hopes to draw media attention to the special registration. Along with protestors and groups like the Alliance of South Asians Taking Action (ASATA), Arab American and South Asian volunteers have set up shop outside the INS office to sign in and out every immigrant who goes in to register. This sign-up sheet will help keep tabs on the immigrants who may face detention.

“I feel like this is the first time since 9/11 there has been national attention to detentions,” ASATA member Vivek Mittal said.

According to Bobby Khan of CIAP, the program, and its denouement in Southern California, has had a profound impact on Muslim communities elsewhere. Hundreds within the Pakistani community have purchased one-way tickets out of the country, many destined for Canada, out of fear of getting caught in the hard-line immigration dragnet set into motion by the Department of Justice since the Sept.11 attacks.

Dalia Hashad, an attorney with the ACLU’s Campaign against Racial Profiling, criticized the federal government for being disingenuous in its administration of the program. “Within one month, [the special registration program] takes people in good status and makes them deportable. The government is not adequately advertising the requirement,” she said.

According to Hashad, the ACLU was told by the INS that it had received a temporary gag order from the Department of Justice, preventing notification of populations affected by the registration requirement. Immigrant advocates’ requests that the INS extend the deadlines so that communities could be properly notified of the requirement were also rejected.

Press inquiries to the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation were not returned by press time.

Some Muslim Americans have taken the constitutionality of the registration requirement to the courts. On Dec. 24, the Alliance for Iranian Americans (AIA), the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, the Council on American Islamic Relations, and the National Council of Pakistani Americans filed a class-action lawsuit in Los Angeles against Attorney General John Ashcroft and the INS, alleging that the December detentions were unlawful in the absence of arrest warrants. The lawsuit also seeks an injunction to prevent future detentions of immigrants who have means of legalizing their status, and bail hearings for those who are detained.

According to Babak Sotoodeh, president of the AIA, the INS is still holding 15 Iranian Americans in San Diego, without charge but in a criminal jail. “The program is illogical,” he says.

“How many terrorists do you think will show up and register? These are law-abiding people, people with children, and their only crime was to go and register.”

The suit was filed in Los Angeles, but has been sent to a judge in Santa Ana by abatement on grounds that it is a similar case. A federal judge has already dismissed a lawsuit filed by Iranians who sought a temporary restraining order on the INS.

While the AIA and ally organizations are awaiting word on the injunction, they are also urging people to talk to their congressional representatives and demand a special inquiry into the INS’ actions.

“This is nothing we want to be engaged in now,” said Hashad. “The Constitution is not a document that protects us in times of ease, but in the worst of moments. We don’t need to cast it aside, and we need it now.”

Large rallies are scheduled for Friday’s registration deadline in both New York and San Francisco. In San Francisco, speakers for the Friday rally include supervisor Tom Ammiano and Yuri Kochiyama. Dozens of local and national advocacy groups have endorsed the Campaign to Stop the Disappearances’ rally in New York. Along with demands to halt the registrations and free current detainees, the demonstrators also plan to hold jumma, or Friday afternoon prayer.