The Clipboard: Liberty in the Balance, Part III

From an article¹:

In the shadow of the Ambassador Bridge, 24-year-old Sohail Rahim is waiting for a yellow Checker cab that will ferry him into Canada, where he hopes to start a new life.
Again.

Two years after he fled persecution in Pakistan and carved out a life of freedom in Dallas, he is fleeing the United States and the fear of the FBI coming for him. (link)

As counter-terrorism policy, this has failed, since there have been no terrorism suspects charged out of all the people who have been questioned, registered, or detained. As immigration policy, this is discriminatory, singling out certain immigrants because of their nationality, while leaving others of different nationality with the same violations alone. Something has got to change.

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Complete text of the article, Liberty in the Balance -- Uprooted Again, by Sam Stanton and Emily Bazar

In the shadow of the Ambassador Bridge, 24-year-old Sohail Rahim is waiting for a yellow Checker cab that will ferry him into Canada, where he hopes to start a new life.
Again.

Two years after he fled persecution in Pakistan and carved out a life of freedom in Dallas, he is fleeing the United States and the fear of the FBI coming for him.

"I loved Dallas," Rahim said, standing along a bleak Detroit street with all his possessions stuffed into two large, black rolling suitcases.

But the fear of being deported back to Pakistan for an immigration violation is too severe for him to risk staying in the United States.

He already has spent five days in a Detroit jail, housed with criminals because he showed up at the wrong immigration counter in Canada by mistake and was turned back to America, where immigration officials held him because of his expired visa.

Rahim is among thousands of immigrants who have left the United States in the past year after coming here in search of better and safer lives.

Some had expired visas. Others were in the United States legally but feared deportation to their home countries if they registered under new, post-9/11 programs.

Many said they left after the government targeted a small segment of the 7 million illegal immigrants in the United States: Muslim and Middle Eastern men.

The face of immigration in America -- a nation built by immigrants -- is changing dramatically in the shadow of Sept. 11.

A string of new policies designed to thwart terrorists instead has entangled thousands of immigrants of all nationalities, many of them here legally.

Arabs and Muslims talk fearfully of FBI visits to their neighborhoods after the attacks, and again before the war with Iraq. Mexican immigrants, both legal and illegal, are afraid to return home because new border restrictions may prevent them from being readmitted to the United States.

Thousands of immigrants lost jobs as airport screeners when noncitizens were banned from holding such positions.

A nation that for years accepted illegal immigration as a reality of American commerce suddenly has shut its gates, and Middle Easterners are being expelled or driven out by the new policies.

Federal officials say the rationale is simple: Immigrants who are violating the law, even in a minor fashion, cannot expect to live in the United States without facing penalty or expulsion.

"There were a lot of people who were flouting our laws," said Dennis Murphy, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. "They came here as a student, spent a couple of years as a student, and instead of leaving when they were supposed to leave, they decided, 'Well, I'll hang around 'til they catch me.'

"That's not fair to all the people who came here to go through the process, obtain a green card or become citizens, and they go through the process."

The result has been that large numbers of Pakistani and other immigrants have abandoned cities such as New York, Detroit and Chicago. In response, advocacy groups have launched legal challenges and public campaigns against a crackdown they say unfairly targets selected immigrant groups.

"Post-9/11, they're seen as terrorists and people we just can't trust," said Robert Rubin, legal director of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights in San Francisco.

The exodus includes highly skilled engineers and teachers who have decided to try their chances in Canada, where immigrants seeking refugee status are allowed entry with minimal effort.

There, people who were well-paid professionals in their own countries live in cramped apartments and modest rental houses much like the ones they once had in the United States.

They are forming new communities and once more learning the ropes of getting their children into school and their paperwork processed so they can get jobs.

But they no longer worry they will end up in jail.

"I'm believing in Canada now; I'm born again," said Abdul Majid Sheikh, a 43-year-old Pakistani who left his Jersey City home and emigrated to Windsor, Ontario, last January.

Before Sept. 11, immigrants who came to the United States on temporary visas routinely stayed even after the visas had expired. There was little enforcement, and federal officials acknowledge that many eventually got their green cards, even after staying in the country illegally.

That changed dramatically for Middle Easterners after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Majid Sheikh, whose visa had expired, wanted to stay in the United States to care for his wife, who needs daily dialysis treatments, and raise their children. Among them is Khairunnisa, a U.S. citizen born in Jersey City on the morning of the Sept. 11 attacks.

"We call her 9/11 baby," he said.

But the fear of being deported to Pakistan increased as FBI agents combed through East Coast neighborhoods with large Middle Eastern populations to question immigrants.

"In the neighborhood, the FBI would go to the doors, and if men would answer, they would be taken away," he said, repeating the rumors that many have accepted as fact. "What happened was men stopped answering the door. It was fear of deportation."

FBI agents did question many immigrants in the wake of Sept. 11 and intensified those efforts before the war with Iraq. The bureau tried to convince the targeted communities that these were not sweeps aimed at arresting people, but efforts to seek information on possible terrorist-related activities.

That was a hard sell in many communities, particularly after the federal government decided to require men from 25 mostly Middle Eastern and North African nations to register their presence and submit to being interrogated, fingerprinted and photographed. More than 82,000 male immigrants ages 16 and over who were not green card holders or citizens have complied with the order.

For many immigrants, both legal and illegal, the requirement triggered the decision to leave for Canada.

Among them are Muhammad Akhtahr-Nazir and his wife, Nasreen, who moved with their two sons from Bayshore, N.Y., to Toronto last December.

The couple had abandoned lucrative careers in Pakistan to move to the United States and hoped to settle in New York, where Nasreen, a 33-year-old artist and school principal, planned to pursue a master's degree in art.

Her husband, a 40-year-old mechanical engineer, had come to New York two months after the Sept. 11 attacks. At the time, his six-month visitor visa had only one month left on it.

By December, his visa had expired, forcing the family to make a choice: stay and risk being deported to Pakistan, or cross over to Canada.

"I should stress, the people of America, there is nothing wrong with the people of America," Nasreen said. "We had so many friends. We discussed the war (in Afghanistan) and politics together with them, but there was no quarreling at all.

"Everything was discussed openly. I cannot say that there was even a single moment where I felt that, 'Oh, my God, where have I come.' "

At one point, the FBI paid the family a visit, asking routine questions about whether they had knowledge of terrorist-related activities.

The matter of the expired visa never came up, and the family debated whether to risk trying to renew it.

But as the March 21 registration deadline for Pakistanis loomed, they decided the chance of deportation was too great.

The hardest part was telling their sons, now ages 9 and 6, that they were moving to yet another new country.

"I took a whole night to tell them," Nasreen said. "We left all their belongings in the school. They said, 'Oh, I have left my markers. I have left this and that.' But they are kids."

With their tearful young sons in tow, the family spent the night of Dec. 28 in a motel facing Niagara Falls, then tried to cross into Canada.

Virtually any immigrant who claims he is a refugee can enter Canada and stay while the refugee claim is considered, a process that can take months or even years.

"We went to the border with Niagara Falls and booked a room for a night, and we stayed there for just an hour," Muhammad said. "And then we went to see the bridge over Niagara Falls just to see what is the situation."

The family found they could take a taxi directly to Canadian immigration on the north side of the bridge.

But when they arrived and asked to enter the country, the authorities turned them back. They didn't have an appointment.

For the Canadians, the matter was simple. Make an appointment, and return later. But for the family, the moment was terrifying. To get back to the American side they had to pass through U.S. immigration, and Muhammad was certain he would be arrested as soon as he handed over his expired visa.

"We were afraid that we would be deported straightaway," he said.

For several hours, the family said, American immigration officials questioned the husband and repeatedly told him he would be deported. Ultimately, they were sent instead to a refugee settlement house in Buffalo, which weeks later helped them get to Canada.

Today, the four live together in a cramped but neat one-bedroom apartment in a poor section of Toronto.

A flowered drape separates the living room from a small sleeping area with a double bed. A television sits on a wooden stand. There is a Formica table with four small kitchen chairs and a green felt sofa, all purchased from used-furniture stores.

Danish, a 9-year-old who is in third grade, and Haris, a 6-year-old first-grader, go to school nearby and studiously attend to their homework each night before they delve into treats such as the cartoon "Dragonball Z" and the "Goosebumps" book series.

In scrapbooks in a makeshift office, where Nasreen has taped up a photocopied list of "10 principles of success," are photographs from Pakistan of a home with lush gardens and a large yard, pictures that are a testament to just how much the family gave up when it left for the United States.

"We hope to have a nice townhouse in a year," said Nasreen, who volunteers as a translator and at a day care center. "I want here to be on our own feet. We don't want to be on welfare."

More than 30 million foreigners come to the United States annually to visit, work or study, with the vast majority returning home after brief stays.

Officials say even now the government has no firm idea of how many stay on illegally. Before the attacks not much effort went into tracking them.

In the aftermath of Sept. 11, however, immigration controls have become a priority, part of a crackdown U.S. officials say is necessary to keep the nation safe.

Attorney General John Ashcroft made the policy clear six weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, saying the Justice Department would use the same strict philosophy Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy employed against organized crime in the 1960s, when he vowed to arrest gangsters for spitting on the sidewalk.

"Let the terrorists among us be warned," Ashcroft said in a speech to the nation's mayors in Washington, D.C. "If you overstay your visa, even by one day, we will arrest you. If you violate a local law, you will be put in jail and kept in custody for as long as possible."

At the time, opposition to that position was muted. But as the government created programs requiring immigrants from selected countries to report to federal agents, the result has been a focus on Middle Easterners, particularly men.

Of the 82,880 from those 25 nations who registered with immigration offices, more than 13,000 now face the possibility of deportation, mostly because of visa violations.

Of those who registered, 136 have been classified as "criminals" by federal officials, and 11 have been detained as suspected terrorists, immigration officials said. The government has refused to divulge their names, nationalities or any information about their alleged terrorist ties.

The targeting of Middle Easterners has outraged civil libertarians and immigration advocates who say the policies are decidedly un-American.

"There are 7 million illegal aliens right here in the U.S.A.," said Samina Faheem, national coordinator of the American Muslim Alliance. "As Muslims, we are not asking for any special favors. We just want to be treated fairly, equally under the Constitution, just like everybody else.

"If they're going to ask 13,000 Muslims to leave the country because they had minor visa violations and they overstayed, then they should deport all of those 7 million people."

Moreover, critics question the notion that the new registration process will help authorities net potential terrorists; they say it's ludicrous to assume a would-be terrorist would stroll into a government office and register his presence.

"Registration did nothing," said James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute. "It accomplished nothing of any worth. That is the tragedy of it all. It is a PR stunt that had a negative impact on the affected community. This confusion of immigration policy with counterterrorism was a mistake from the get-go."

And the immigrants who dutifully reported to the federal government discovered there could be a steep price to pay.

One Bay Area attorney offered the example of what happened to 13 of her clients under the program.

The men reported to government offices in San Francisco and San Jose last December as the deadline approached for men from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan and Syria to register.

All 13 had jobs and had been living in California. None had criminal records, and all showed up on the final day of registration, Dec. 16.

But only three had valid work visas. The others, including some who had applied years earlier for green cards, were in violation of their immigration status.

Overwhelmed by the number of immigrants reporting at the same time, immigration officials took all 13 into custody and held them for two days in Northern California.

On Dec. 18, they were taken to Oakland, where they were loaded onto an unmarked federal jet and told they were being shipped to San Diego for processing.

They realized mid-flight something was odd when they looked out the airplane's windows and saw snow-capped mountain peaks, said Banafsheh Akhlaghi, a San Francisco immigration attorney.

They ended up at a federal facility in Florence, Ariz., a desert community midway between Phoenix and Tucson where the state prison is located. But they didn't stay long. With the sudden influx of detainees nationwide, there was no place to keep them.

They weren't allowed to eat, shower or sleep after landing in Arizona, according to the attorney, and in the course of the next 30 hours were loaded back onto a plane and flown to Colorado, then Kentucky, then Bakersfield, then Oakland.

From there, they were flown to San Diego, where they were held in a jail that had room enough for the men.

Akhlaghi finally found her clients on Dec. 22.

"I don't even recognize the country we're living in right now," she said. "All of this in the name of national security is absolutely frightening to me. ...

"We're making criminals out of innocent folks who got rounded up in the frenzy of being Muslim or Middle Eastern. Their only crime is that that they happen to have been born in the wrong country."

Federal immigration officials said they could not comment on the incident, citing pending litigation.

Today, 10 of the men face deportation, although they are no longer in custody. The three with valid visas were released and charges dropped.

U.S. officials defend the registration program, saying it is common sense to seek information on men from countries known to harbor terrorist groups.

"We feel that the program has been successful inasmuch as not only have there been individuals coming into the country who had very substantial criminal records ... but even individuals who have serious terrorism connections and membership in organizations like al-Qaida," Attorney General Ashcroft said during a July visit to Sacramento.

And federal officials note that even before Sept. 11, plenty of cases were prosecuted against immigrants who were in the country illegally.

"Being here illegally is a crime," said McGregor Scott, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of California. "If someone gets pulled over by a cop and somehow the cop determines he's an illegal immigrant, he doesn't say, 'Well, go on your merry way.'

"I don't think that's what was going on before September 11. I think what the attorney general is saying is that more attention is being paid to it because of September 11."

Canadian immigration officials were reluctant to comment on the surge of Pakistanis from the United States seeking refugee status. They would say little except to acknowledge that the numbers were unusually high early this year.

But immigration experts in that country are looking southward with disbelief.

Salim Murad, who works with refugees in Windsor just over the border from Detroit, said he has had trouble convincing Canadian immigration lawyers that Pakistanis and others are fleeing the United States out of fear.

"When I tried to explain to one what was happening in the United States, he said, 'That's nonsense,' " Murad said.

Others say the American policies are naive.

"Even if I am living legally in the United States, what would possess me to come forward and register?" asked Bediako Buahene, an immigration attorney based in Vancouver. "Because how am I going to prove I'm not a terrorist?"

That was the dilemma facing Riaz Ahmed, a 59-year-old Pakistani who fled his home country for Virginia in July 2000 and now lives in Toronto's growing Pakistani community.

Ahmed found a job near Alexandria as an accountant and applied for a green card in October 2000. When his application was denied, he said, his attorney appealed.

The appeal was pending when the registration process began, but fear of being shipped back to Pakistan led to a crucial choice: abandon his car, his furniture, his computer, and board a bus for Canada.

"It was a very, very difficult decision," he said. "Why did I come to America? America has a slogan. They are the people who implement human rights rules. But where are the human rights rules now?"

reference=http://www.sacbee.com/content/news/projects/liberty/story/7468279p-8410793c.html