Racial Profiling Will Never Make America Safer

On Friday, March 21, men and boys from Pakistan and Saudi Arabia who are here on student, guest worker, and other sorts of visitor visas must voluntarily register for the Immigration and Naturalization Service's (INS) controversial National Security Entry-Exit Registration System (NSEERS) or face deportation.

Although the INS has the right to register foreign visitors, its NSEERS program is a form of profiling that appears to constitute racial discrimination under international law because it targets individuals based on their country of origin rather than evidence of criminal acts. Furthermore, it incorporates "interrogation of a law enforcement or national security nature" and in so doing transforms a simple-if apparently racist-registration process into a police investigation system.

On its website, the INS explicitly denies it is discriminating on the basis of ethnicity or religion. Rather, the policy states the INS is selecting individuals "solely on [the basis of] nationality and citizenship."

Never mind that 24 of the 25 countries whose citizens must register are Middle Eastern nations whose populations are overwhelmingly Arab and/or Muslim. Never mind that less than two years ago both Attorney General Ashcroft and President Bush said that there was no place for racial profiling in America. By apparently using national origin as a proxy for race and religion, and race and religion as a proxy for suspicion, they would have you think they are making America safer without violating our national values of equal treatment and fair play. In truth they are doing neither.

Under international law this policy appears to be a clear case of racial discrimination.

As the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, which the US has signed and ratified, clearly states "racial discrimination" includes mistreatment "based on race, color, descent, or national or ethnic origin."

African American leaders from WEB DuBois to Adam Clayton Powell have taught us that when the US will not uphold the universal right to nondiscrimination, it is important to move the debate to the international arena for it is there that truth crushed to earth often has its first chance to rise again.

But we should not even have to go there on this issue. There is simply no reason for leaders on both sides of the aisle to remain blind to the fact that this war-on-terrorism program suffers from the same tragic flaws as the war on drugs' rightfully maligned practice of profiling African American motorists.

Of the thousands who voluntarily registered with the INS on two previous deadlines, hundreds were detained on minor immigration charges without access to an attorney or family members. Many-not a few of whom have been in this country working hard and paying taxes for decades-now face deportation because of the INS' backlog on visa applications.

Some who voluntarily registered and were detained have reportedly been denied food, necessary medicines, and access to lawyers. They've been forced to sleep standing up on concrete floors, subject to strip searches, hosed down with cold water, and shuttled between states in prison buses looking for available cells while shackled and handcuffed.

While the INS has bolstered staff and equipment to improve this procedure, devoting more resources cannot eliminate the underlying issue of racial discrimination.

For example, 16-year-old Hossein Ahmadi is an Iranian-born British citizen who lives with his mother in Encino, California. Ahmadi was working on his literature homework while waiting to speak with an immigration official but 30 minutes later was led away in handcuffs as his seven-month pregnant mother watched. "They sat me in a tank with three other boys and I was the only INS case...I asked them what they were doing in there. One of them had done a burglary and one of them had stabbed someone. Just being among them, I felt like a criminal." [source: ABC News]

The fact that Attorney General Ashcroft continues to defend this de jure form of profiling has caused many to question if he ever actually intended to stop its de facto counterparts- such as some police departments' continuing misuse of traffic stops to harass innocent Americans whose color riled the cops' suspicion or US Customs reportedly similar mistreatment of black and brown travelers.

Mistreating teenage boys and their fathers for no other reason than the people to which they belong-be they black citizens or brown visitors- creates deep wounds that even time may have a hard time healing. The INS must apply immigration laws fairly and in accordance with international standards against discrimination. The administration must recommit itself to ending racial profiling and Congress must ensure Representative Conyers' End Racial Profiling Act is reintroduced and passed. Moving beyond racial discrimination is one of the surest ways to make our country safer.

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Ben Jealous is the Director of Amnesty International USA's Domestic Human Rights Program. He is the past Executive Director of NNPA-The Black Press of America. For more information, visit www.amnestyusa.org

Photos of Dr. Ben Jealous is available by emailing editors@unityfirst.com