Immigration Law as Anti-Terrorism Tool

Unlike that controversial roundup, most of the recent arrests have not involved secret proceedings. Still, they can be hard to track. A few cases have turned into high-profile criminal trials, but others have centered on little-known individuals processed in obscure immigration courts, with no mention of a terrorism investigation.

In some cases, the government ultimately concludes that a suspect, while perhaps guilty of an immigration violation, has no terrorism ties at all.

Authorities are often reluctant to disclose why an immigrant's name emerged in a national security investigation, because the information is classified or is part of a continuing probe. Homeland Security officials turned down a request by The Washington Post for the names of all those charged in the past two years, making it difficult to assess how effective their strategy has been at thwarting terrorism.

But a post-Sept. 11 aggressiveness is evident in dozens of immigration cases described by federal officials, defense lawyers and news accounts. For example, authorities have taken the unusual step of stripping some immigrants' U.S. citizenship. Officials are also using immigration charges to pressure people to provide information on Muslim organizations, several attorneys said.

This is an anti-terrorism effort fought largely behind the scenes, in the murky world of intelligence and informers, often barely visible in the court files of those charged.

Consider the case of Waheeda Tehseen.

Tehseen was a Pakistani graduate student when she immigrated in 1988 after spending a childhood in poverty near the Afghan border. Over the years, she acquired the trappings of a successful American life: a PhD in toxicology, a four-bedroom house in Fairfax Station and a $90,000-a-year job at the Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA even presented Tehseen its "Unsung Hero" award for her volunteer work overseas with Afghan refugees.

But on Feb. 2, 2004, her success story abruptly ended.

Tehseen, then 46, was arrested and accused of lying on her naturalization application in 2001. The violation centered on one question: Have you ever claimed to be a U.S. citizen? No, Tehseen had checked. In fact, in 1998, she had accepted a job in EPA's pesticide division -- a position she knew was open only to U.S. citizens.

"I just had to have the job for my children," a weeping Tehseen said in an interview last year, explaining that she had been supporting three daughters and a son. She considered it "the tiniest error"; she had been a legal resident, and would become a citizen in 2002.

Authorities considered it part of a pattern of deception. They noted that Tehseen had also listed a phony employer, instead of the EPA, on her application in an apparent effort to disguise the lie.

The violations would probably never have been caught, but Tehseen came under scrutiny in a terrorism-related investigation. She said the probe apparently involved an orphanage she opened in April 2003 on the Pakistani-Afghan border, using funds from a Missouri-based group, the Islamic American Relief Agency.