Legal Commentary

ICE Investigated Muslims Before 2004 Election

By TChris

Around the time of our last presidential election, Homeland Security decided that 2,500 foreigners, mostly Muslim, within the nation's boundaries should be viewed as a potential threat to national security. And so they were investigated by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The internal reports show that immigration agents questioned the foreigners about what they thought of America, whether violence was preached at their mosques, and whether they had access to biological or chemical weapons.

Some of the foreigners were detained for immigration violations, but there is no evidence that any were charged with a crime against national security. While ICE claims it did not single out foreigners for interrogation based on their race, ethnicity, or religion, nearly four out of five came from Muslim-majority countries. It certainly appears that the government's suspicions were based on religious profiling rather than an actual reason to suspect threatening behavior. [more ...]

“This was profiling,” said Michael Wishnie, a professor at Yale Law School who helped lead the research effort. He added that the findings raised questions about both the effectiveness and the propriety of the program. “The resources devoted to this were enormous,” he said, “but the results clearly were not.”

Not only did ICE engage in profiling, it apparently did so for a political purpose. It cannot be a coincidence that the foreigners who were arrested for immigration violations as a result of the investigation were arrested shortly before the presidential election. Was the "investigation" just a ruse to drum up support for the fiction that the Bush administration was busy protecting "real America" from terrorists?

It's time to put an end to profiling.

The issue of ethnic profiling in counterterrorism programs has taken on added significance because of new Justice Department guidelines that go into effect Dec. 1 and give investigators even broader authority to open terrorism investigations without evidence of wrongdoing. The American Civil Liberties Union and other rights groups argue that the new guidelines will allow federal investigators to make targets of Muslims, Middle Easterners and others without evidence of links to terrorist groups.

The Obama administration should tear up those guidelines.

Full post as published by TalkLeft on October 31, 2008 (boomark / email).