U.S. Anti-Terrorism Tactic: Immigration

But Hajbeh's case passed to immigration court, a separate system, and he continued his peripatetic journey through Virginia's prison system. Since his arrest, he has been shuttled among six jails, his husky frame becoming steadily leaner.

"I think, here is law in United States," said Hajbeh, in a maroon velvet robe, breast-feeding her 1-year-old in the bright living room. "What is this law?"

Her husband is the calm one, the student of the Koran who urges his family to remember how the prophets suffered. Najwa is the one sprouting white hairs: She is having to feed seven children without her husband's $11.25-an-hour salary, and she is begging friends to lend her money and take her to the jail, because she doesn't drive.

For a highly traditional Middle Eastern woman, it is not easy to speak to a public gathering of men and women. But in July, Hajbeh told her story to a local group, Unity in the Community, which fights racism and anti-Semitism. Its members began attending Hajbeh's hearings.

"The more we heard, the more it became clear the government has not put forth evidence for why this man should continue to be incarcerated," said Sandra Fox of Manassas, a math tutor. "I am distressed and appalled at the way our government is behaving."

Targeted Tactic

Hundreds of Arab and South Asian men were arrested and removed from the United States shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, mostly because they had overstayed their temporary visas. Many were caught up in the terrorism investigation by accident.

The current actions are more targeted. Homeland Security officials say they are looking for immigration violations that would allow them to jail and eventually deport legal residents believed to have ties to terrorism. They also are trying to revoke the U.S. citizenship of a handful of suspects, alleging that they lied on their applications -- a rare procedure that has been used mostly against former Nazis.

Prosecutors sometimes turn to immigration rather than terrorism charges when classified documents are involved. They often can't reveal such information because it would expose sources or tip off others under investigation, law enforcement analysts say.

"You may know something and know it 100 percent . . . but you may not be able to use it [in court]. That happens all the time," said Matthew Levitt, a former FBI counter-terrorism analyst who is now at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

It is not clear what is in the government's classified information on Hajbeh. In general, it can include such things as telephone intercepts, reports from informants and documents from foreign intelligence services.

Government officials emphasize that there is nothing wrong with prosecuting suspects on immigration charges instead of terrorism accusations. In fact, they say, it is their duty to pursue any kind of wrongdoing. "What's frustrating sometimes is the sense [among critics] that . . . it's an okay thing to violate immigration law," said Garcia, the Homeland Security official.

Civil liberties activists counter that the government is using immigration law because it is easy to find a violation in the often-byzantine regulations. And immigration proceedings offer fewer protections than criminal courts. For example, defendants don't have the right to a court-appointed attorney.

David Cole, author of "Enemy Aliens," a work critical of the Bush administration's anti-terrorism effort, said the Hajbeh case seems a perfect example of selective enforcement.

His marriage and divorce "would never even raise an eyebrow" if not for the anti-terrorism campaign, said Cole, a law professor at Georgetown University. The immigration charge, he added, "becomes a pretext for targeting people who the government has some suspicion about, whether that's warranted or not."