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WJPBR Email News List [EMAIL PROTECTED] Peace at any cost is a Prelude to War! Deportee Sweep Will Start With Mideast Focus By Dan Eggen Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, February 8, 2002; Page A01 Federal agents will soon begin apprehending and interrogating thousands of illegal Middle Eastern immigrants who have ignored deportation orders, seeking ways to prosecute any who have ties to terrorism and compiling the results of interviews in a new computer database, according to a Justice Department memo. The Jan. 25 memo instructs federal agents to find methods of detaining some of the immigrants for possible criminal charges, rather than merely expelling them from the United States as previously planned. The tactics are part of the Immigration and Naturalization Service's efforts to locate an estimated 314,000 foreign nationals, known as "absconders," who have ignored court orders to leave the country. Justice Department and FBI officials have said that the operation would focus first on about 6,000 immigrants from countries identified as al Qaeda strongholds, though the vast majority of absconders are Latin American. Yesterday, officials said the arrests will begin next week with a group of fewer than 1,000 illegal immigrants, most from the Middle East and Pakistan, who are believed to be the most dangerous because they are convicted felons. The "Absconder Apprehension Initiative" is the latest example of the Justice Department's wide-ranging efforts to thwart terrorism by increasing its focus on domestic intelligence gathering. So far this campaign has involved, in part, compiling information on foreign nationals living in the United States both legally and illegally. The internal department memo, sent to anti-terrorism officials by Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson and obtained by The Washington Post, shows that the FBI and Justice Department have created a special computerized reporting system that already includes information gathered from recent interviews with thousands of Middle Eastern men who were invited to come forth voluntarily. Results from the new round of interrogations will be added to the database. U.S. officials are forming special "apprehension teams" that include agents from the FBI, the U.S. Marshals Service and the INS, according to the memo. Justice Department officials said it is logical to start the absconder program by gathering information on people living here who may have ties to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda terrorist network, which has been blamed for the Sept. 11 terror attacks on New York and Washington. "We can't go after 314,000 people at a time, so it only makes sense to prioritize them in a way that makes sense from a law enforcement perspective," said one senior Justice Department official. "If we didn't do this, then we should be criticized." But the absconder program's initial focus on Middle Eastern nationals has renewed complaints from Arab American and civil liberties groups that the Bush administration is practicing racial profiling in its war on terrorism. Khalil E. Jahshan, vice president of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee here, said yesterday that information in the special terrorism database could be used to unfairly smear the reputations of innocent individuals. "This whole path the government is taking is clearly a case of racial profiling," Jahshan said. "It's clearly a case of selective enforcement. . . . These half-baked methods seem totally isolated from a whole tradition of respect for civil liberties and civil rights in this country." Unlike the recent round of interviews with thousands of foreign nationals who submitted voluntarily, the interrogations will focus on people who have ignored orders to leave the United States and may have committed other crimes, according to the memo. The first list will include many "who appear to be convicted felons," Thompson said. "While there are aspects of this Initiative that are similar to the Interview Project that was recently conducted by the [Anti-Terrorism Task Forces], I want to make clear that this is a very different undertaking," Thompson wrote. "Unlike the subjects of the Interview Project . . . these absconders are to be apprehended and treated as criminal suspects, and they are to be afforded all standard procedural rights and constitutional protections." Each subject will be read Miranda rights before being questioned, according to the memo. Investigators have also been instructed to point out monetary rewards and special immigration breaks available to those who cooperate. "Investigators conducting interviews should feel free to use all appropriate means of encouraging absconders to cooperate, including reference to any reward money that is being offered and reference to the availability of an 'S Visa'," Thompson wrote. Dubbed "snitch visas" by critics, S visas are offered to immigrants who provide valuable information for criminal or terrorism investigations. Although the general outlines of the initiative have been reported previously, Thompson urged participants to keep the operation secret. "This Initiative will not entail any official notice to either the public or the absconders," he wrote. "It would be counterproductive, and potentially dangerous, to provide the absconders with official warning that agents and officers will be seeking to locate and capture them." Immigrants with no links to terrorism will be swiftly deported through normal INS procedures, according to the memo. But if the FBI decides that an immigrant should be investigated further, federal prosecutors will seek to charge the person with a felony for failing to depart the country as ordered. U.S. attorneys offices also "should consider whether the absconder has engaged in criminal conduct, aside from the immigration violation, during his stay in the country," the memo said. *COPYRIGHT NOTICE** In accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. Section 107, any copyrighted work in this message is distributed under fair use without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for nonprofit research and educational purposes only.[Ref. http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ] Want to be on our lists? Write at [EMAIL PROTECTED] for a menu of our lists! 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