Homeland Security ends immigrant registration that targeted men from Muslim countries

[SrWoodchuck]

http://www.freep.com/:



May 16, 2011

BY NIRAJ WARIKOO

DETROIT FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER

The National Security Entry-Exit Registration System (NSEERS), was a special registration program aimed at all male visitors to the U.S. 16 and older from Muslim-majority countries and North Korea.

The countries were Afghanistan, Algeria, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Egypt, Eritrea, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, North Korea, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates and Yemen.



The U.S. government has ended a controversial counterterrorism program created in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that required men living in the U.S. who came from mostly Muslim countries to register with federal authorities.

Called NSEERS -- National Security Entry-Exit Registration System -- the program required registration, interviews and fingerprinting of male visitors 16 and older from Muslim nations as well as North Korea.

The program targeted men entering the country as well as more than 80,000 men already in the U.S., about 1,000 of them from metro Detroit. Nearly 13,800 residents were further investigated, and 2,870 were later deported.

But not a single case resulted in anyone being charged with terrorism -- a fact that experts say proves the program was a failure that unfairly harassed thousands.

NSEERS did "not catch terrorists," said Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia, a law professor at Penn State University who has extensively researched the program. "It was ineffective and alienating."

The Department of Homeland Security quietly ended the program through a notice buried on its Web site on April 28.

Homeland Security immigration program ends, but Dearborn dad faces deportation for minor violation

In 2003, long lines formed at federal immigration offices in Detroit as anxious men from Arab and other countries waited to be registered under a new counterterrorism program.

The government said the registration, including fingerprinting and interviews, was needed to help secure the country in the war on terrorism. But many felt it was ethnic harassment.

"They treated us like animals," Siefeddine Siefeddine, 44, of Dearborn recalled Friday.

The Lebanon native says he went through a registration process from 9 a.m.-7 p.m., only to be told to report back the next day.

Across the U.S., about 80,000 men like him -- those 16 or older from 24 Muslim-majority countries and North Korea who already lived in the U.S. -- eventually were registered though the domestic part of NSEERS, the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System. Many were interrogated, and all had to report back periodically.



Out of the 80,000 U.S. residents who were registered, 13,799 were referred for further investigations and 2,870 were detained.

Many were deported for immigration violations that ordinarily would not have been a priority for law enforcement.

Siefeddine, for example, faces deportation because he was found in 2003 to have overstayed a visitor's visa, normally a low-priority violation. Now Siefeddine works at a gas station and said he can't go back to Lebanon because of his wife and two children.

Several advocacy groups, including the Arab-American committee and the National Immigration Forum, are asking the Department of Homeland Security to reconsider these cases. The department says it will review them on an individual basis.

Most visitors fingerprinted

Another problem with NSEERS, critics say, is that when the Department of Justice started the program in 2002, it was not properly publicized. Some men got in trouble for failing to comply with NSEERS even though they were unaware of the program.

And many who did show up faced problems.

In California in 2002, about 400 people were detained on the spot when they showed up to register, raising fears in Middle Eastern and Muslim communities. Critics said the process had echoes of registration programs for ethnic groups during World War II.

The U.S. government was low-key in ending NSEERS: Its April 28 notice was not publicized. In the notice, the Department of Homeland Security said it was "eliminating redundant programs."


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Weren't the 9/11 terrorists basically "unmonitored" by such a program? I guess since OBL got a headache, jihad is dead, too? Meanwhile, are these terrorists, that are operating inside a failed third world country & able to walk across the US border; ready to begin fomenting the crisis that the Obama machine needs to accomplish their next theft of wealth & liberty?

Hezbollah in Mexico