A federal judge in Brooklyn (USA) recently ruled that the government has wide latitude under immigration law to detain ‘non-citizens’ on the basis of religion, race or national origin and hold them indefinitely without explanation. The law has given the government broad discretion to enforce laws selectively against non-citizens for any unspecified reasons; an immigration judge had ordered them removed from the country.

 Yasser Ibrahim was recently arrested under this ruling and was appalled and shocked by the judge’s decision. He said “I am frightened for other Muslims in the United states, who would face the same discrimination and abuse that I suffered”. We have seen the consequences here in Britain where law enforcement to combat terrorism has meant that suspects can be detained up to 24 days without charge. Lately, we have heard about the police shootings in Forest gate in attempt to arrest two Muslim brothers that the intelligence service miscalculated as potential Al-Qaeda suspects. As a result the local Muslim community and the metropolitan police in that borough are working hard to earn trust and support from the community. This has left an area of uncertainty with the way the government has responded to its citizen’s post 9/11 and 7/7 bombings.

 The new American lawsuit that allows suspects to be detained or deported on the grounds of race or religion will only distance these communities further and eventually work against them. 

The ruling came in response to the class-action lawsuit by Muslim immigrants detained after 9/11, however, dismissed the key claims the detainees had made against the government. The round-ups after these arrests and raids after the 2001 terror attacks showed little or no effort to distinguish between genuine suspects and Muslim immigrants with minor visa violations.

 The view that non-citizens are ‘illegal aliens’ and should be removed from the country is systematic racism, labelling and filtering through all those who are classed as ‘non-citizens’ regardless of whether they disapprove, dissociate or condemn attacks against innocent civilians or that of September 11th. The government holds the right to detain people indefinitely as long as their eventual removal is “reasonably foreseeable”. If that interpretation stands, it could apply to millions of non-citizens, such as tourists.

Judge Gleeson wrote “The executive is free to single out ‘nationals of a particular country’ and focus enforcement efforts on them”. David Cole a law professor and co-councillor in the lawsuit re-illiterates “What this decision says is the next time there is a terror attack, the government is free to round-up every Muslim immigrant in the US; based solely on their ethnic and religious identity, and hold them on immigrant pretexts for as long as it desires”. This is hardly the answer to combat ‘global terrorism’, sugar-coated in defence of ‘national security’.

Enforcement of such laws will only drive a wedge between the state and minority religions, races and ethnicities singling them out. The US once again is using its economic driven motives and prejudice policies to implement and enforce their own interests and benefits. How much longer will it take to shake ourselves and see this turbulence that will affect Muslims across the globe? If we sit back and do nothing of it the problem will only grow, then we only have ourselves to blame!

 Source: nytimes.com 

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