Bill of Rights Defense Campaign

BILL OF RIGHTS Defense Committee - Working with communities to uphold the Bill of RightsWe the People
Working with communities to uphold the Bill of Rights
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Current Threats to Immigrants, Refugees, and Foreign Students

Under the USA PATRIOT Act and other executive branch policy, non-citizens are being deported or detained indefinitely without judicial appeal. Since March 2004, the DHS’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement office (ICE) has dramatically increased the questioning, detention and deportation of undocumented immigrants. Few legislators have proposed bills to protect the rights of non-citizens, who have been hurt the most since September 11, 2001, and who have no representation in Congress.

One of the main impacts of the Homeland Security Act was to dissolve the Immigration and Naturalization Service into various offices of the DHS. This action has blended the government’s tasks of preventing terrorism and enforcing immigration policy.

Immigrants and Refugees

Many of these policies have unjustly targeted Arab and Muslim immigrants. On November 9th, 2001 the Attorney General issued a memo explaining how the FBI would interview 5000 Arab/Muslim men in hopes of preventing terrorism. In February of 2002, the DOJ reported that only three of the 2261 men who were interviewed were charged, all with non terrorism-related crimes. Nevertheless, in March 2002, the DOJ announced another round of 3000 interviews.

See Comprehensive Reform of Our Immigration Laws by the National Immigration Forum.

Foreign Students and Visitors

Additionally a new policy of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) called the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS) “maintains and manages data about foreign students and exchange visitors during their stay in the United States.” Congress authorized the program in section 641 of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) of 1996. ICE maintains the database. While the program aims at catching immigration violations, intelligence officers also use SEVIS data to “identify patterns of criminal activity, including terrorism.”

Other Resources

Building Bridges with Arab and Muslim Community Members
Threatened Communities
Noncitizens
CLEAR Act
Detention Centers: Is there a detention center near you?
Guantanamo Bay abuses