In June, John Ashcroft proposed that residents of Iraq, Iran, Libya, and Sudan staying here for more than 30 days would be forced to register in a directory, and those who didn't report could be arrested by local police and deported. In July, Peter Kirsanow, a Bush appointee to the Commission on Civil Rights, suggested that World War II-style internment camps, like those used for Japanese-Americans, would be likely in the event of another terrorist attack. "Not too many people will be crying in their beer if there are more detentions, more stos, more profiling," he reportedly said. (If you feel like crying in your Bud Ice, write your congressperson.) As Sohail Mohammed, a New Jersey lawyer, says, "In peaceful times you don't need a Constitution, but this is the real test."
"We have to be sure we're not admitting terrorists," INS spokesperson Bill Strassberger says. "No one's singled out because they're Muslim, but 9/11 showed us we need to be more careful. Unfortunately, some people call that discrimination. I tend to call that caution." He says a security check takes 24 hours and that there is no back-log. When I tell him Rafah and Samira have been locked up for four months and Farah's family for six, he pauses, asks for their case numbers and says he'll get back to me. By press time, he hasn't.
I can't decide which is more screwed up: (1) that our tax dollars are spent locking up 14-year-old girls as potential terrorists; (2) that our government needs six months to do a security check on a 32-year-old mother with two kids; (3) that our goverment erects discriminating screening procedures intended for Muslims and then applies them to Christian Iraqis; or (4) that as we talk of bombing that country off the map, we start treating its asylum seekers like criminals. It all seems so bumbling and mean--and at the bottom, just frighteningly incompetent. Either our government is frozen with fear that it can't tell the difference bewteen a terrorist and a refugee, or we're trying to show our strength by slamming the door on defenseless people who really need a safe place to go.
Time is running out on the interview. The guards behind the doors are starting to move around.
"We trust this government, we trust the U.S.," Rafah pleads. "Please tell us why we're in this prison."
"We're dying every single day here," Samira says. "We pray three times a day, and we cry a little bit. We talk about our mystery, and we ask God to give us patience--"
"Patience not only to stay alive and be released, but so we're not crazy when we leave," Rafah interrupts. "Sometimes I talk to my relatives here in America and say I'm afraid I might spend my whole life in prison. And my aunt says,'Oh, no. In this country, we have laws.'"
(The end to the article. I hope it opened some eyes. ~forestchild~ You can join Unsolved Mysteries and post your own mysteries or
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Halloween is Right around the corner.. .
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