Behind racist cover of U.S. war on terror
13,000 Muslims, Arabs face deportation
By Greg Butterfield
More than 13,000 Arab and Muslim men who
voluntarily registered with the U.S. government from December
through April face deportation in the largest planned mass
expulsion since the attack on the World Trade Center on Sept.
11, 2001.
Only 11 individuals, out of the more than 82,000 who
cooperated with the Department of Homeland Security's demands,
were said to have ties to organizations the Bush regime
considers "terrorist." But the government claims that 16
percent of those who registered were found to be in breach of
some legal technicality in their immigration status and will be
deported.
"Many had hoped to win leniency by demonstrating their
willingness to cooperate with the campaign against terror,"
reported the New York Times, which broke the story on June 7.
"They were not promised special treatment, however, and
officials believe that most will be expelled."
Immigrant rights advocates charge that many of those men
termed "illegal" have lapsed visas due only to a government
backlog in processing their paperwork, not through any fault of
their own. Some have charged the Bush administration with
deliberately stalling the process of re-registering work
permits, student permits, green cards and citizenship
applications.
Others are victims of the capitalist recession that has
thrown millions of people out of work. Immigrants with work
permits are only allowed to stay if they are employed. In the
current climate, Middle Eastern and Muslim immigrants are often
the first to be fired.
Like their sisters and brothers from Latin America and other
parts of the world, these workers have been forced to come to
the United States to seek jobs and decent living conditions,
health care and other basic necessities denied to them by U.S.
imperialist super-exploitation of their homelands.
Washington's registration campaign, coupled with the war and
occupation of Iraq and the climate of racist demonization
against Arab and Muslim people, is having a ripple effect
through working-class communities throughout the United
States.
"Quietly, the fabric of neighborhoods is thinning," the
Times noted. "Families are packing up; some are splitting up.
Rather than come forward and risk deportation, an unknowable
number of immigrants have burrowed deeper underground. Others
have simply left--for Canada or their homeland."
More than 600 Arab and Muslim men were deported in the first
wave of expulsions after 9/11. When the number of detainees
reached 1,200, the Justice Department stopped releasing
figures. A second, larger wave of expulsions took place last
year, though officials refuse to release numbers.
Deportations of immigrants from Asia and Africa have swelled
27 percent in the past two years. Expulsions of Pakistanis,
Jordanians, Lebanese and Moroccans have doubled, and those of
Egyptians have nearly tripled.
In Brooklyn, N.Y., the Arab-American Family Support Center
says that 500 of its clients are fighting deportation
orders.
Report exposes racist abuses
Attorney General John Ashcroft testified before a
congressional committee June 6. He defended the USA Patriot
Act, detentions and expulsions, and asked for even more
sweeping powers to spy on, arrest and indefinitely hold without
charges anyone alleged to have ties with "terrorist"
organizations. (Associated Press, June 6)
During questions by members of Congress, Ashcroft brazenly
demonstrated his disregard for civil rights. He and his staff
couldn't answer simple queries about which personal records
could or could not be seized under current Patriot Act
provisions.
Just days earlier, on June 2, an official internal Justice
Department review found that "Many immigrants rounded up after
the Sept. 11 attacks were chained, physically and verbally
abused, held without bail and denied access to lawyers."
(French Press Agency)
The report confirmed the charges levied for nearly two years
by organizations that defend civil rights, civil liberties and
immigrant rights.
"We found significant problems in the way the detainees were
handled," admitted Justice Department Inspector General Glenn
Fine. His report dealt only with the first wave of detentions.
Most of the men were Pakistani and had no connection to
so-called terrorist groups.
The report singled out the New York branch of the FBI and
Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, the site of numerous
demonstrations in solidarity with the illegally detained.
"The FBI should have expended more effort attempting to
distinguish between [immigrants] who, while possibly guilty of
violating a federal immigration law, had no connection to
terrorism but were simply encountered in connection with a ...
lead."
And, "The evidence indicates a pattern of physical and
verbal abuse by some correctional officers."
All 762 people detained at the time were found guilty of
violating immigration law, the Justice Department says. But
according to the inspector general's report, 130 of these had
no lawyer, and at least 54 were held for more than the 90 days
in violation of the "anti-terrorist" laws.
Detainees at the MDC were wrongly classified as "witness
security" inmates. This designation "frustrated efforts by
detainees' attorneys, families and even law enforcement
officials, to determine where the detainees were being
held.
"We found that MDC staff frequently-and mistakenly- told
people who inquired about a specific Sept. 11 detainee that the
detainee was not held at the facility when, in fact, the
opposite was true."
The report can be read at www.usdoj.gov/oig/lgwhnew1.htm.
The capitalist government is trying to eradicate liberties
won over decades of struggle and go back to the days when
immigrant workers had few rights. It's a threat that needs to
be answered with the old union maxim, "An injury to one is an
injury to all."
Reprinted from the June 19, 2003, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
Email: ww@workers.org
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