Several national Arab American and Muslim organizations filed suit Tuesday in federal court, asking for an immediate stop to the detention of hundreds of legal U.S. visitors who registered in recent weeks as part of a security and monitoring program.
The class-action lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, accuses the Immigration and Naturalization Service and U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft of illegal arrests. Spokesmen for Ashcroft and the INS were not available for comment Tuesday.
The INS has refused to say how many have been detained, but lawyers and immigrant advocates estimate as many as 700 in Southern California. In the Bay Area, lawyers counted about a dozen cases.
They are among the hundreds who came to INS offices in San Jose, San Francisco and Southern California and were detained while trying to meet a Dec. 16 deadline for a registration program for male visitors 16 and older from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan and Syria.
The program is designed to allow the INS and the government to monitor the movement of legal U.S. visitors -- students, tourists and high-technology workers, for example -- who come from countries the U.S. suspects of harboring or supporting terrorists.
Lawsuit's claims
Filed on behalf of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, the Alliance of Iranian Americans, the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the National Council of Pakistani Americans, the lawsuit charges that the government is detaining legal U.S. visitors who have applications pending to adjust their legal status as immigrants. Lawyers claim that many of those now being detained for minor visa violations were in the process of adjusting their status from temporary visitors to legal immigrants. In fact, the lawsuit said, the delays in these adjustments were the result of the INS failing to act on earlier applications.
``The INS is treating law-abiding immigrants as if they're convicted felons,'' said Linda Sheriff, of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee in San Francisco.
``There's an issue of fundamental fairness,'' said Khurrum Wahid, a New York City lawyer representing the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a national group that has offices in the Bay Area. ``These are people who followed the rules and they were still arrested.''
Wahid and other lawyers also contend that the government is undermining its own effort to register legal U.S. visitors by creating a climate of fear with the detentions. Wahid said the arrests of hundreds last week are likely to keep away others who face two upcoming deadlines: Jan. 10 for visitors from Afghanistan, Algeria, Bahrain, Eritrea, Lebanon, Morocco, North Korea, Oman, Qatar, Somalia, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates and Yemen. Visitors from Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are required to register with the INS from Jan. 13 to Feb. 21, 2003.
``What's happening in Los Angeles is endemic,'' said Joannie Chang, a staff attorney with the Asian Law Caucus in San Francisco and one of the co-counsels representing the plaintiffs in the class-action lawsuit. ``Ever since 9/11, the government has taken a lot of actions in the name of national security.''
One of the direct outcomes of Sept. 11 in the Bay Area was the layoff of hundreds of Filipino airport screeners, Chang said.
``What is the connection between Filipino screeners and the terrorist bombings? It's really an excuse for the government to take all these actions against immigrants,'' Chang said....
<http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/news/local/4811794.htm> -- Yoshie
* Calendar of Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html> * Anti-War Activist Resources: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/activist.html> * Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/>