White House Steps Up
Racial Profiling

Detainees Abused in U.S.

by Arnoldo García

Before Sept. 11 racial profiling was considered illegal and unconscionable. Now it is a centerpiece of government policy.

Early in the morning of May 19, two weeks after the West African community of Silverthorne, Colorado opened a mosque, FBI and immigration agents descended upon their homes and workplaces. With guns drawn, they arrested immigrants who had fled political violence in Mauritania.

Oumar Niang told Colorado's Summit Daily News that the raid against his community took place because they are Muslim and black. He explained, “I understand a few foreigners are here illegally, including some of our neighbors from other countries, but they targeted all West Africans.”

Since Sept. 11, illegal racial, religious and ethnic profiling has spiraled out of control as immigration and law enforcement agencies target immigrants, for almost any pretext, under the guise of national security.

Resembling the grisly scenes of U.S. prisons in Iraq, the Justice Department’s own Office of Inspector General (OIG) released a report in July 2003 detailing the abuse suffered by 762 South Asian, Arab and Muslim immigrants arrested in the post-Sept. 11 dragnets.

The Inspector General found that the detainees were strip searched, often in front of women guards, and videotaped. One detainee told the OIG that it was an affront to his religious beliefs to be naked in front of women.

ABU GHRAIB AT HOME

Detainees were held for months at a time in cells that were illuminated 24 hours a day. Guards would bang the cell doors to wake up detainees, interrupt their prayers and harass them at all hours of the night. Guards routinely slammed detainees into the wall, twisting their arms, hands or wrists. They would press their faces into a T-shirt emblazoned with a U.S. flag and the phrase “These colors do not run.”

In November 2002, Attorney General Ashcroft announced a “Special Registration” program, requiring all males 16 years and older from 25 mainly Arab and Muslim countries to come to an INS office to be fingerprinted, photographed and interrogated on their knowledge of terrorism. Lasting almost 18 months, “Special Registration” had a devastating impact on immigrant communities.

• Despite complying with special registration, several thousand immigrants were immediately detained. The U.S. is deporting 14,000 people, including 66-year old Malik Muhammad Akbar, a retired poultry farmer who recently suffered a heart attack.
• Thousands of Pakistanis in New York, fearing deportation, literally packed up and fled the U.S. seeking refugee asylum in Canada. One Pakistani, a long-time resident of New York, explained why his family decided to flee: “We are being made to feel like third class citizens. I don’t want my children to grow up around this kind of hatred.”
• Within hours of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003, the FBI unleashed “Operation Liberty Shield.” The program required thousands of Iraqi immigrants to be registered and interviewed. Many were detained and an unknown number deported.

Comparing the WWII internment of Japanese Americans to special registration, John Tateishi of the Japanese American Citizens League told the San Francisco Chronicle: “It echoed something from our experience in 1941. It’s really about racial identity and racial profiling.”

To date, not a single person arrested in these sweeps has been charged with, or found to have, any connection to terrorism.

After the May 19 raid, many West African families decided to leave Silverthorne, saying that they did not feel safe there anymore. Paul Stein, director of the Rocky Mountain Survivor Center, stated: “If word gets out that this is the reception you get for fleeing persecution, people will live underground, look for other countries or stay in persecution.”

Arnoldo García, an editor of War Times, is a senior program associate at the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights in Oakland, Calif.

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