Arab, Muslim Groups Sue INS, Ashcroft Over Detentions

LOS ANGELES, Dec. 24 -- Attorney General John D. Ashcroft and the Immigration and Naturalization Service were sued today by a coalition of Arab and Muslim groups over the mass detentions of immigrants from Muslim countries who came forward to register under new anti-terrorism rules.

The class action lawsuit sought an immediate injunction against further arrests and alleged that large numbers of men who came forward to register in Southern California last week had been unlawfully detained.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Los Angeles, followed outrage over the detentions of hundreds of immigrants -- most of them Iranians -- who presented themselves at immigration offices under the anti-terrorism program and who were taken away in handcuffs and locked up, sometimes for days, for overstaying their visas.

The Justice Department did not return calls seeking comment.

Local immigration lawyers estimated last week that 1,000 men and boys were detained in standing-room-only centers and forced to sleep on concrete floors, under a system designed to track potential terrorists but that instead locked up many caught in the lengthy process for obtaining permanent residence.

Official figures from the Department of Justice and the INS put the number of detentions in California at less than 250. Officials said about 20 were still detained in the Los Angeles area, five in San Diego and a handful in San Francisco.

The men were detained under a post-Sept. 11, 2001, program that requires males older than 16, without a permanent residence, from 20 Arab or Muslim countries to register with authorities.

Peter Schey, president of the Los Angeles-based Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law and the lead attorney for the six, unnamed plaintiffs in the lawsuit, said mass registration was irrational because "no undocumented terrorist will come forward."

Schey said the lawsuit was not about resisting registration but about the way it was being implemented.

"The program is being used as a scam to lure people into INS offices supposedly to register, when what they really face is arrest, detention and even deportation despite their pending petitions to legalize their status which the INS refuses to process," he said.

The registration deadline for the first group, which included Iranians from the 600,000-strong Iranian exile community in the Los Angeles area, fell on Dec. 16. Deadlines are approaching in January and February for citizens of Afghanistan, Algeria, Yemen, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

"The mass arrests have further eroded confidence in the fairness of the INS and the immigration system among Arab and Muslim communities," the lawsuit said. It was filed by the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, the Alliance of Iranian Americans, the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the National Council of Pakistani Americans.