Edition: U.S. / Global

9/11 Panel Calls Policies On Immigration Ineffective

Published: April 17, 2004


The commission said one program had proved so fruitless that it was discontinued after less than a year.

The critical assessment was released this week as part of a preliminary finding to a final report due in July. It returned a spotlight to programs that have been controversial from the start, aimed mostly at people, like the 9/11 hijackers, from Muslim or Arab countries. Critics have said the government engaged in a wholesale roundup of these people, kept them in jail for months, in some cases without access to lawyers, and conducted closed-door legal hearings on their status.

Many of the libertarian and pro-immigration groups that have criticized the Bush administration for what they deem the unfair and unnecessary focus on these groups hailed the findings. They said that as the first independent assessment of government actions after 9/11, it affirmed their misgivings.

''Clearly, the government was overreaching,'' said Timothy H. Edgar, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, about the immigration programs. ''We raised concerns from the beginning that they not only interfere with time-honored civil liberties, but they were likely to prove to be ineffective.''

But a former Justice Department official involved in the development of the programs defended them as critical to counterterrorism efforts.

Kris Kobach, a Republican candidate for Congress in Kansas who served as counsel to Attorney General John Ashcroft from 2001 to 2003, said the programs had yielded great benefits by leading to the identification and deportation of hundreds of people with criminal backgrounds or indirect ties to terrorism.

Mr. Kobach said the commission viewed the impact of the programs too narrowly, drawing conclusions based solely on the application of antiterrorism laws, rather than others, like immigration law. ''The commission is looking for a terrorism label affixed to an individual,'' Mr. Kobach said in an interview. ''But it's failing to realize that just because the F.B.I. hasn't gotten to the point of applying the terrorism label, it doesn't mean the individual is not a terrorist.''

Perhaps the most controversial of the programs was one that sought to identify ''special interest'' immigrants, which resulted in the arrests of more than 700 people, most from Middle Eastern countries, who were charged with violating immigration laws and held for months, in many cases, until federal agents cleared them of any involvement in terror-related activities.

The commission report echoed concerns raised when these programs were initiated. The concerns led to an investigation by the inspector general at the Justice Department that found that officials ''made little attempt to distinguish'' between immigrants who had ties to terrorism and those who did not.

Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies, a civil libertarian organization, called the detention program misguided, saying: ''Hundreds of people's rights were violated, and, very importantly, the United States is now seen around the world as a country where Arabs and Muslims can be arrested in secret and held without charges. That's a very dangerous development in terms of a country promoting democracy and human rights as an antidote to terrorism.''

But Mr. Kobach said the detention program had proved more valuable than the commission knew, leading to the deportation of at least three men with ''strong, substantial connections to terrorism,'' including a roommate of one of the 9/11 hijackers, an immigrant who confessed to attending a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan and another who was found with 75 pictures of the World Trade Center.

In response to the inspector general's report, the Department of Homeland Security issued new guidelines last month to streamline the process for handling cases involving immigrants held in connection with national security concerns.

The commission report also disparaged a program that requires additional screening for visa applications from 26 predominantly Muslim countries. It charged that investigators had not been processing them in a timely fashion and that ''no terrorists have been uncovered'' by the effort. The report also cited a program, begun in November 2001, that delayed visa applications from the same countries and a few others. The commission concluded that the program, which was shut down 11 months later, ''yielded no useful antiterrorist information and led to no visa denials.''

Other critics said the two programs had discouraged students, artists, entrepreneurs and other travelers from visiting the United States and alienated a community ''that was as shocked as anyone by the 9/11 attacks,'' in the words of Frank Sharry, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, an advocacy group.

But Mr. Kobach defended both efforts, saying that the first was necessary for the security of the country and that the second was a temporary and necessary action while efforts were under way to make sure federal investigators could scrutinize the names of visa applicants.

The commission criticized a fourth program, the Absconder Apprehension Initiative. Its intent was to round up 5,000 immigrants from countries with a Qaeda presence who were facing deportation and to expedite their expulsion. The commission found that by early 2003, 1,139 had been apprehended, a group that included 803 who had been deported, 224 who were awaiting deportation and 45 who were being prosecuted on other criminal charges.

But so far, the commission report said, ''we have not learned that any of the absconders were deported under a terrorism statute, prosecuted for terrorist-related crimes or linked in any way to terrorism.''

Mr. Kobach asserted that the so-called absconders were already in violation of immigration laws and some were wanted for other criminal violations, including more than 100 who were found to be sex offenders.

''In many cases,'' he said, ''we have kicked terrorists out of the country over garden-variety immigration laws.''