US Frees Most Mideast Immigrants Detained in Ca.

[Michael Pugliese]

US Frees Most Mideast Immigrants Detained in Calif.
Fri December 20, 2002 09:15 PM ET By Gina Keating LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - 
All but 20 of the hundreds of Middle Eastern men detained this week in 
southern California after voluntarily presenting themselves to register 
under new anti-terrorism rules have been released, U.S. immigration 
officials said on Friday.
"All the people taken into custody were people whose visitors visas had 
expired," a U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service official, who 
requested anonymity, told Reuters. "Some remained in custody because there 
are circumstances surrounding them that potentially make them of interest 
to law enforcement."
Hundreds of non-citizen Middle Eastern men were detained this week in Los 
Angeles jails and an INS detention center in Arizona when the voluntarily 
appeared to register for a data base that will eventually track entries and 
exits by all non-citizens.
The federal government has ordered the INS to have the system in place by 
2005.
"This registration period lasted for 30 days but the lion's share of the 
registrants showed up in the last eight hours," the INS official said. "It 
overwhelmed our system. Every one of the applicants had to be interviewed 
and had to have a background check. We had to insure that anybody we put 
back on the streets would not pose a threat."
Most of the men who complied with the registration requirement were 
processed and sent on their way, the official said, declining to give the 
number of people registered.
The registrants and detainees submitted to criminal background and document 
checks, fingerprinting and interviews about their immigration status, the 
official said.
'TOTALLY HUMANE'
The mass detentions this week prompted a huge street protest that snarled 
traffic for hours around a U.S. government office building in Los Angeles 
earlier this week, and Muslim and civil rights activists demanded on Friday 
that the registration program be halted immediately.
The Justice Department has said 227 people had been arrested in California 
for overstaying their visas under the post-Sept. 11 program, which requires 
men over 16 from 20 Muslim or Arab countries without permanent residence to 
register with authorities.
But the Muslim Public Affairs Council, a national advocacy group 
headquartered in Los Angeles, put the number of detainees closer to 700. 
Attorneys for the detainees said the mostly Iranian males, some as young as 
16, were jailed in inhumane conditions in freezing, standing-room only 
detention centers.
INS officials said, however, that the detainees were treated "in a totally 
humane way" and were given access to showers, telephones, medical care and 
translators.
Hussem Qutub, spokesman for Muslim Public Affairs Council, said the group 
planned to petition federal officials to stop the registration program and 
to take another look at the PATRIOT Act, anti-terror laws passed by 
Congress last year.
The Muslim Public Affairs Council meets this weekend in Long Beach, 
California for an annual conference which includes presentations from 
federal officials, Qutub said. The 2,000 delegates to the convention will 
vote on a resolution calling for an immediate end to the registration 
program, he said.
"We are pushing for hearings on these and the PATRIOT Act which gives broad 
powers to government to be able to detain people and round them up," Qutub 
said. "These measures are highly deceptive and simply ineffective in 
identifying people with ties to terrorism."
He warned that the round-up would make Muslim residents less likely to 
cooperate with federal investigators, saying: "They have to stop these 
deceptive tactics that frighten law-abiding members of the community."

-- 
Michael Pugliese