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New York, March 31, 2004: A series of recent Department of Homeland Security initiatives relating to detention and asylum seekers have sparked questions around the country. These initiatives include a new "pilot" detention program in Connecticut, the use of electronic monitoring devises in Florida, and a DHS request for contractors to conduct intensive supervised release projects in 8 cities.
In addition, as described below, the Lawyers Committee has recently released a report on US Law and Security policies. A link to the new report appears at the end of this newsletter.
Asylum Seekers in Connecticut Detained Under New Pilot Program: The New York Times and Associated Press reported last month that the Department of Homeland Security and its interior enforcement arm, the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (known as "ICE"), had initiated a pilot program in Connecticut to detain asylum seekers and other immigrants who were not already detained. The pilot program began in August with no notification to the public. The program, which was reported to be underway in Hartford, Connecticut, was scheduled to terminate on September 30, 2003.
Under the pilot program, non-citizens who were denied asylum or other relief entitling them to stay in the country by an immigration judge
could be immediately taken into DHS/ICE custody and detained until deported. If not for this pilot program, asylum seekers and other non-citizens would remain free while pursuing appeals to the Board of Immigration Appeals and potentially the Federal Court of Appeals. The
decision to detain is made by an ICE official in Hartford, and though there may be some extreme circumstances that would weigh against
detaining an individual, those criteria have not been made public. Some of the people who are being detained may be eligible for release on
payment of a bond, although many asylum seekers and others cannot afford to pay the extraordinarily high bond amounts that have reportedly been required for release.
Among those detained under this program are asylum seekers who are in removal proceedings after having voluntarily identified themselves to
U.S. immigration authorities (now DHS's BCIS) by applying for asylum. Penalizing this group for detention is counterproductive. Asylum seekers should not be discouraged from coming forward to seek protection and those who have voluntarily come forward should not be penalized by being detained. DHS and ICE have not released public information indicating whether they plan to expand this "pilot program."
Ankle Bracelets for Asylum Seekers in Florida -Alternative to Detention or Alternative to Parole? : In August, the Department of Homeland Security/ICE initiated a program in Miami, Florida through which asylum seekers were released from detention but subject to electronic monitoring devices (EMDs). The Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children, the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center and the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights wrote to DHS Secretary Ridge to express concern about the use of these devices as a substitute for the parole of asylum seekers without such intrusive monitoring. The groups noted that the devices could be useful in allowing for the release of individuals who would otherwise be detained.
Asylum seekers subject to the Miami program are not permitted to leave their homes for more than five hours, hampering their ability to meet
with lawyers or to attend to medical or family matters. In one case, ICE authorities believed an asylum seeker had violated the requirements of
the program when he left his home to appear for his immigration court hearing at the Krome Service Processing Center.
DHS Requests Proposals from Contractors To Run Intensive Supervised Release Projects in 8 Cities: Over the past several months the Department of Homeland Security/Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), has been soliciting proposals from contractors for a new alternative to detention program called the Intensive Supervision Appearance Program (ISAP). ISAP is slated to be implemented by DHS in 2004 in 8 cities, and program participants are to include "up to 200 immigrant adult asylum seekers,
non-criminal aliens, and aliens on an Order of Supervision who would otherwise be held in secure custody and who are required by law to be
held in the legal custody of the DHS."
According to DHS materials:
* The program will target adult illegal immigrants that would otherwise be held in secure custody but can show they are not at risk of
violent behavior and/or absconding, and have family or other appropriate sponsorship to guarantee their release.
* ISAP is designed to insure attendance at immigration hearings and will provide "highly structured and closely supervised" Orders of
Supervision for 200 participants per year at each of the following designated sites: Baltimore, Denver, Kansas City (MO), Miami, Philadelphia, Portland, San Francisco, and St. Paul.
* The program will include frequent reporting, home visits, and monitoring of daily activities through electronic monitoring devices.
Non-governmental organizations have a range of concerns about the ISAP program, including its call for the use of electronic monitoring devises for some participants. Advocacy organizations are also concerned that the program may be applied to immigrants who would otherwise be released from detention without supervision, instead of to detainees who would not otherwise be released. In response to these concerns, DHS has stated that it "does not intend to utilize the ISAP to 'widen the net' for persons that would normally be released anyway. It is designed to improve appearance rates at immigration hearings for those persons that would otherwise be held in secure detention."
With respect to the choice of the eight sites, DHS materials state that "The process was part of an internal management review of offices to
determine the viability of the program in the field." The DHS materials released regarding ISAP do not explain why New York and New Jersey were excluded from ISAP - particularly as these areas include two of the largest detention centers for asylum seekers in the US, the 200-bed
Wackenhut facility in Queens, New York and the 300-bed CCA facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey.
Lawyers Committee Issues New Report on US Law and Security Policy: The new report by the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, "Assessing the New Normal," examines changes to U.S. law and security policy in five areas: government openness; personal privacy; immigration; security-related detention; and the effect of U.S. actions on international human rights standards. The report concludes that while certain changes in law and policy have been sensible and constructive, many others threaten basic rights and freedoms, and taken
together reflect a significant departure from rule of law principles.
The report highlights how what it terms the "new normal" has meant a diminution of legal safeguards, a breakdown of the system of checks and
balances (in particular, judicial oversight of executive branch decisions), and a reduction in government openness and accountability. Each chapter contains a set of policy recommendations-including calls for increased congressional oversight, rolling back certain provisions
of the USA PATRIOT Act, and close scrutiny of additional measures being proposed by the President and Attorney General John Ashcroft.
Indeed, the control of foreign nationals has become the main domestic front in the war against terrorism, with the INS becoming subsumed into the new Department of Homeland Security. In the process, America has moved from a nation that sought to exploit and integrate immigrant labour, to one that seeks to eradicate it, however impractical that may be for the US economy. Immigration is thus the one policy area where America now imitates Europe, rather than vice versa. But, while Fortress Europe provides the inspiration for this new approach, the scale of repression surpasses anything we have so far seen on this side of the Atlantic.
Total surveillance: The ambition of the new American approach is to create a system of total surveillance of foreign nationals, enabling the authorities to monitor and locate every non-citizen travelling through or resident in the USA. Whereas before September 11, computer databases of immigration details were kept separate from police databases, Attorney-General John Ashcroft has, since then, been eager to put regular police officers in the frontline of the war against immigrants. Local law enforcement agencies have therefore been given the power to arrest persons on suspicion of violating immigration law, a power previously restricted to the INS. And hundreds of thousands of case files of immigration information have been integrated into the National Criminal Information Center database, giving every police officer the ability to check immigration status during a traffic stop or other encounter. This has led to a huge increase in police stops of Middle-Eastern and South Asian-looking drivers for interrogation as 'suspected terrorists', in the same way that African-Americans are stopped on suspicion of drugs,
or, as it has come to be called, for 'driving while black'. (So many Arabs and Asians have been ejected from flights because they looked 'suspicious', that the phrase 'flying while brown' has come into use to describe this new quasi-crime.
Later this year, the Department of Homeland Security will introduce USVisit, a new electronic checking system that photographs, fingerprints and iris-scans every foreign national entering or leaving the US for work or study. This will enable the US government to operate a level of surveillance of movement through the country that has never before been attempted. But for those foreigners who are already resident in America, the authorities have conducted a series of registration programmes, the aim of which is to track all foreign nationals by 2005. Every resident of a particular nationality is required to register with the immigration authorities by a certain date or face immediate arrest and deportation.
Zero tolerance: 'Registration' involves being fingerprinted, photographed and interrogated, thus adding to the already vast pool of data being collected on foreign nationals by the US state, with little accountability. So far, men who are nationals of a selection of Asian, African and Middle Eastern countries have been rounded up by setting a series of distinct deadlines. Hundreds of thousands of people have so far come forward, of whom thousands have been detained and tens of thousands given notice to appear at immigration hearings. The slightest violation - for example, failing to notify the authorities of a change of address or spending too much time abroad - can lead to detention and/or deportation proceedings.
In December 2002, the INS took out ads in Los Angeles' ethnic media, which gave the impression that a forthcoming registration process would be a normal procedure. But it soon emerged that it was not. Around 400 men and boys from Iraq, Iran, Libya, Sudan and Syria were detained - one in four of those who came forward - mostly for minor visa violations. Lawyers reported that those arrested were taken to prison cells so crowded that some were forced to rest standing up, while others were hosed down with cold water before finding places to sleep on concrete floors. About 3,000 people protested outside LA's federal building as news of the arrests spread.
The fact that would-be terrorists are unlikely to participate voluntarily in the registration programme seems to have been lost on the INS. But along with any terrorists, many others, who have what previously would have been considered minor problems with their immigration status, are choosing to go underground for fear of being deported. And fear is also leading many others to accept voluntary deportation for minor violations that would not ordinarily be deportable offences. When they are the family breadwinner, then entire families, including children who are US citizens and have lived there their entire life, are uprooted.
Just as zero tolerance policing in America's black ghettos put millions of young African-American men behind bars, so zero tolerance of immigration offences is criminalising vast numbers in America's poorest immigrant communities. In both cases, the usual checks and balances against miscarriages of justice are swept aside.
Workplace raids: The systematic trawling for immigrants has also reached the workplace. In November 2001, 10,000 immigrant workers at airports across America lost their jobs following new regulations that prevent foreign nationals from working in aviation. In addition, a series of high-profile raids - which were presented as anti-terrorist operations - led to more than 1,000 workers being arrested and deported for immigration violations. For example, 143 workers - mostly women preparing in-flight meals - were arrested at Houston's George Bush airport. Many were no longer employed at the airport but were lured back there by their former employer for the day so that they could be arrested in the raid. Needless to say, none of those arrested was charged with any offence related to terrorism.
While non-citizens are no longer trusted to work in airports, there are no such restrictions on sending them into battle to fight the US state's
imperialist wars. An estimated 38,000 foreign nationals have been recruited into the US military, joining the disproportionately high number of
African-Americans in the lower ranks. Often they join up in the belief that putting their life at risk for the US government will increase their chances of gaining citizenship. One such person was Jose Gutierrez, who entered the United States illegally after being orphaned as a child in Guatemala. He was one of the first US servicemen killed in the war on Iraq.
Refugee rights: In line with other anti-immigration policy changes, the number of refugees admitted to the USA has been dramatically reduced over the last eighteen months. And, emulating the European Union, Canada and the USA have recently signed a 'safe third country' accord, meaning that asylum seekers who have passed through the USA to reach Canada, or vice versa, will be rejected outright.
In addition, the Department of Homeland Security is detaining asylum seekers in much greater numbers. In March 2003, all asylum seekers from a list of over 30 Middle Eastern and Asian countries were detained as part of the security build-up connected to the war on Iraq. The following month, the government won the effective right to detain any asylum seekers, regardless of whether they pose an immediate national security risk. In the test case of David Joseph, a detained Haitian asylum seeker who had sought to be released on bail while awaiting the outcome of his case, federal agencies argued that his release could prompt an 'influx' of Haitians seeking to immigrate to the US. This would, in turn, overburden the coastguard, who would then be less effective in guarding against terrorist attacks! The only nationals not affected by the new ruling are Cubans, who are permitted by law to remain in the US if they reach its shores
But some of the attempts at mass deportations, conducted in the name of national security, have failed. In January, campaigners from the
Seattle-based Hate Free Zone Campaign successfully challenged the US government's plans to deport around 2,700 Somalis. Their removal was claimed to be necessary as part of the war against terrorism, even though no evidence was provided to link even one of these individuals to a terrorist group. A district judge has now imposed a national moratorium on deportations to Somalia, citing instability in the country and the lack of a recognisable authority to accept the deportees. The court also rejected the argument that Somali nationals in the USA pose any terrorist threat.
Dissenters: A growing network of community organisations has sprung up in response to the Bush government's clampdown on immigrant rights. The scattergun approach is producing in its victims a mutual recognition that they are all suffering at the hands of the same system, whether they are Iranians in California feeling vulnerable to arrest or Mexicans having to dodge border patrols. And groups such as the Blue Triangle Network, a national organisation campaigning against detentions and surveillance, are increasingly linking domestic repression to overseas injustices. As shown by the arrest of Farouk Abdel-Muhti, those targeted by the INS are often those who are most vocal in speaking out against US foreign policy in their home countries.
As well as Farouk Abdel-Muhti, there are several other cases of Palestinian political activists who have been detained for spurious immigration
offences. Amer Jubran was taken from his home by INS and FBI agents in November 2002, just two days after helping to organise a pro-Palestinian demonstration in Boston. A permanent resident, he was held on technical violations in his green card status, but was eventually released on bail. He continues to face a deportation order. A Chicago-based Palestinian activist, Ahmed Bensouda, was similarly detained for a minor visa violation before a campaign managed to win his release.
In February 2003, a draft of the Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003 -the so-called Patriot Act II - was leaked to the press. Among its proposals was a new power that would allow the Attorney-General to deport any foreign national whose presence he deems inconsistent with 'national security' (which is defined to include 'economic interests' or 'foreign policy'). And this power would not be open to review by the courts. Furthermore, deportations would no longer require a recognisable government to accept the deportees - the stumbling block for the government's attempt to deport Somalis en masse.
The proposed Act would also radically expand law enforcement and intelligence-gathering authorities, reduce or eliminate judicial oversight
over surveillance, authorise secret arrests (so that arrests under terrorism laws could be kept secret until an indictment is filed), create a DNA
database based on unchecked government 'suspicion', extend the death penalty to further offences, and allow American citizenship to be taken away from persons who belong to or support disfavoured political groups, even if they are native-born. Once stripped of their citizenship, they would be subject to the arbitrary deportation power or, presumably, incarceration at Guantanamo Bay.
Whether these new powers are granted remains to be seen. But what is certain is that the repression of dissenting immigrant voices is becoming an essential component in the machinery of American imperialism.